


Undercover at the Hot Springs

by peterqpan



Category: Naruto
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Established Relationship, Fake/Pretend Relationship, M/M, Pseudal AU (Pseudo Feudal) (History's Greatest Hits), Romantic Comedy, They are your favourites so I made it work, YES IT IS BOTH
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-22
Updated: 2019-03-07
Packaged: 2019-07-15 20:05:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16070339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peterqpan/pseuds/peterqpan
Summary: ‘Abruptly, from the window, Kakashi’s voice came.  “I am available for this assignment.” Her expression brightened into a slow grin.“I really don’t think--” Iruka began, as Tsunade bit her lips, eyebrows raised.  He started again. “Kakashi, do you want a  vacation?  Are you really trying to get your team this...d-rank, limp goldfish mission?”“It could turnintoa dangerous situation,” Kakashi stood against his side in front of Tsunade’s desk, bumping Iruka a bit to the left.“...you two are requesting a few days in the town of love hotels, then?” Tsunade smiled sweetly.’Iruka needs to investigate, and Kakashi is overqualified for this mission.





	1. Iruka's terrible horrible very long day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hobbit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hobbit/gifts).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I am uncertain how many chapters I'll end up with here--probably around six? I have an outline, but we'll see how it goes!

The first would-be genin to step forward was, predictably, the loudest.  Iruka had heard her three times already this week screaming her frustration out at the grappling dummies as he walked home from late-night ramen.  She slammed her hands on his desk confidently, roaring defiance as usual. Also as usual, Iruka and adjacent students plugged their ears as she flailed wildly through the seals for focusing her chakra.  Changing the form of the paper tags was not her forte, but she’d practiced to exhaustion. He held his breath, waving at the pile of tags readied on his desk. When she began, he bit down on explaining how her fervor interfered with her success--her fingers didn’t even _brush_ , let alone correctly interlock to correctly form seals--when the sudden jangle of a metal object hitting the floor brought him up short.  She beamed at him, scooping up the strange dull knife she’d created, barely serrated on one side, and wildly off balance.

“Ha!” her most sarcastic admirer shouted from the back.  “What even is that, Urusako? And you _dropped_ it!”

“I _made_ it, though,” she beamed at Iruka, before turning back to the room and yelling triumphantly, her knuckles impacting with her flak jacket rhythmically.  “Woo! Woo! Woooooo!”

They echoed--it was hard not to get caught up in her delight, even if Iruka couldn’t quite get a look at the awful kunai she’d made.  

The second testee, still rubbing her ribs where Urusako had elbowed her out of the way, took a deep breath, kept her hands close in, and produced a respectable paper kunai.  She met his smile with a nod. She had an odd, crumpled scroll tucked in her belt, which he noted for later.

The third through the fifth student produced something similar--a usable, if not weatherproof, kunai from their paper tag, though as the fourth brought his hands together, there was soft pop and a few handfuls of sand poured weakly from his pocket.

The sixth student formed his tag into an _apple,_ and not even a paper one _._ She looked equally dumbfounded, and hurriedly pulled out the scroll she’d had unrolled up her sleeve.

 

Once the academy had finished reverberating from Iruka’s fury, the birds had returned to Konohagure, and the animals had crept back out from under buildings, Iruka collected the pile of confiscated tags, bombs, and scrolls.  In a calm voice, he informed the entire class and assembled parents that testing would resume with cheating countermeasures firmly in place, and returned to his apartment. Kakashi ambled in just as he was testing a scroll disquietingly labeled “Reproduction Disturbance!!!”  It drooled out two clones with no evidence of skeletal structure. They moaned incoherently, which Iruka echoed, letting his face drop into his hand. “If you didn’t bring ramen, I’m leaving you.”

“Naruto’s bringing it,” Kakashi crouched over the pile of messy, ineptly constructed tools, and pulled his mask down to press chilly lips against Iruka’s neck.  “They were making some seasonal winter topping. Looked like snow. What happened here?”

“Everyone failed the genin exam,” Iruka said crisply, leaning back into him.  “Every _single student,_ for lacking basic, life-saving common sense.  What shinobi with powers of sight, touch, or thought would use this scroll for _ninjutsu_ instead of throwing it as far as possible and leaving the area?  I can’t tell whether it’s to summon a goldfish, transform into a goldfish--”

“Borrow the fighting techniques of the mighty goldfish--” Kakashi unrolled it curiously, and unleashed a damp, squishy, wriggly feeling on their hands.  “...kai,” he dispelled the genjutsu, shoulders shaking as he tried to restrain his snort.

Iruka narrowed his eyes.  “I might be more entertained if I hadn’t watched _every single student_ admit they’d wasted _money_ on these.”

“Where did they even--?!” Kakashi reached around him to pick up the impressively-named “Inheritor Jutsu” scroll, which dropped a sock out of thin air on the floor in a billow of smoke.  The tatami mat began to smolder, and Kakashi blew it out with a gust of wind, which sent the other ‘ninja tools’ into a tiny in-apartment tornado, and by the time he’d caught them all he was suppressing cackles.  Iruka watched, eyes tired.

“Ramen!” Naruto burst through the door, pausing to frown at the puddling Iruka clones.  Kakashi lifted one’s arm and stretched the sodden limb to the ceiling. It puffed into smoke.

“...Naruto,” Iruka swept the table in front of him clear, hands out to accept ramen, and as the child of Iruka’s soul, Naruto had them all slurping ramen before he asked for details.  “What _is_ all this, Iruka-sensei?  It looks like _my_ first genin exam.”  He poked one of the clones with a toe, then frantically kicked the air as it adhered.  After a few seconds of panicked flailing, it poofed, overrun with the mess of tools Kakashi was eagerly rooting through.

“It’s so much worse than that,” Iruka prodded the broth at the bottom of the bowl, hoping to turn up some more noodles.  “It’s someone selling inept and possibly dangerous ninja tools to children, who have been failed by me, their teacher, enough to think buying them is a good idea.  I should have apprenticed myself to Ichiraku Ramen.”

Naruto opened his mouth, indignant, then thoughtfully closed it.  “Would you have given me free ramen?”

“No,” Kakashi answered for him.  “He’d make you serve tables with it balanced on your head, and you’d have elegant posture.”  At Iruka’s snort, he considered the sad puddle of broth next to him, then slid his bowl over to replace it.  Iruka’s mouth quirked up slightly as he dug in to the second bowl.

“Someone is _selling_ these, though?  Who?” Naruto’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully, then widened at a containment circle Kakashi was setting for the pile of misshapen bombs..  

“No one in the village,” Iruka said between slurps.  “No _shinobi_ , as far as I can tell.  They were reluctant to reveal their sources, and the sources are better at covering their tracks than they are at ninjutsu, but once I hear back from a few parents, I can narrow it down.”

“My team and I are here for a few days,” Kakashi offered, scootching close again, and Iruka coughed.

“I think I can manage,” he grinned over.  “I don’t think this merits a full jounin investigation.”

Kakashi leaned against him, reaching over for the last fishcake.  “Let me know if you want help, though.”

“It’s basically a prank,” Iruka finished the second bowl of ramen, and leaned to breathe sad ramen breath against Kakashi’s neck.  

Naruto watched them warily.  “Don’t try to ruin ramen for me.  It won’t work, but I’ll take revenge if you start being _gross_ over _ramen_.”

“The honour of the ramen is safe,” Iruka sighed.  “I’m too _tired_.”

“I would commit to this effort,” Kakashi’s eye narrowed as he touched his chin thoughtfully.

“No,” Naruto began swiftly picking up dishes.

“Allow me to travel to the end of the street for more sustenance for you, my succulent red bean bun,” Kakashi turned to stare into Iruka’s eyes.  “My dolphin prince.”

“Aaaaaugh,” Naruto tried to drown him out, as Iruka began laughing helplessly into Kakashi’s shoulder.

“Irucchi.  My sea-pig, tell me what great task I can accomplish to impress you--I must unveil the mysteries ‘neath your flak jacket.”

Iruka snorted at him.  “The answer you’ll find is I really need a bath, O Limited Edition Ramen of my heart.”

“I am sure your manful aroma will sway me in its favour, my own--”

Naruto gagged.  “That is the _last_ time I _deliver_ ramen to you.  I’ll just eat it outside!  In the snow!  You don’t deserve it--”

“Come here,” Iruka waggled his hand without lifting his head from Kakashi’s jacket.  “You can help. Talk to Konohamaru.”

“Is he cheating again?!”  Naruto dropped next to them, already furious, his fists on his thighs.  “He told me he wouldn’t!”

“Oh, I see, _he_ can help?” Kakashi muttered pointedly.

“ _Naruto_ isn’t one of the few who can complete S-rank missions,” Iruka said distractedly, demonstrating for Naruto that a scroll labeled ‘Soldier pills’ in fact contained an open, half-filled can of sardines.  “He’s likely to talk to you, and he had a bag _full_ of these.”

“I’m gonna go tell him off _right now_ ,” Naruto growled, and Iruka sighed, grabbing his pant leg.  

“It’s snowing.  Help me find the worst of these to use as examples.”

“This explosive tag uses the kanji for tapir instead of explosion,” Kakashi sounded fascinated, pulling Iruka against him so he could inspect it with both hands.

“Do these characters look familiar to anyone?” Iruka turned to use Kakashi as a chair, kissing his cheek in passing, and Kakashi’s cheeks reddened above his mask.  “They obviously aren’t…”

“...fluent?” Kakashi suggested, his eyes having found the Reproduction Disturbance!!! Scroll where it lay unrolled.  “...what…”

“Can I set off these bombs?” Naruto held them up gingerly, jaw set.

“One at a time,” Iruka sighed.  “I should really be writing this down.”

Naruto looked over, glanced around, and frowned accusatorily at Kakashi.  “Kakashi-sensei, why is Iruka-sensei’s brush on that rafter?”

“It was the _wild activities_ we indulged in before you arrived,” Kakashi waggled his eyebrows, and Naruto rolled his eyes, standing on a couple of clone’s shoulders to grab it.

“It’s nice someone in this home takes things seriously,” Iruka sighed, shaking his head, and Kakashi frowned hard at his ear.  

“He’s smiling,” Naruto reported dutifully.

“Bomb one,” Iruka readied his brush as Naruto aimed for the containment circle.  It made a soft popping noise, and sat there.

They all watched one fizzle a bit in a pile of dirt, and one that just thudded into the ground like a bag of hard candies.

“...why…” began Iruka, bewildered.

“Interesting,” Kakashi tried not to laugh into his shoulder.  

“Why aren’t they all at least useless the same _way?”_

“Maybe they wrote down the recipe, but it fell in their ramen, and when they tried to dry it with a jutsu, it caught on fire and then flew into the window of the hokage’s private quarters, and they heard a loud cawing noise, so they left town,” Naruto suggested.

“That’s _very_ specific,” Iruka’s eyes narrowed.  “I don’t think we need to test more--these bombs are not dangerously _over-_ effective.”  

“I can take this typeface to cryptology and see if anyone recognizes it,” Kakashi offered, and Iruka lolled his head back, raising his eyebrows.  “...you’re only in town for a few days. Is that really how you want to spend your time?”

“I will draw a bath,” Kakashi rephrased quickly, sitting the scrolls aside.  

“Aren’t you hungry?” Iruka stood, brushing himself off.  “I ate your ramen.”

“I’ll make something when we get out,” Kakashi was prodding him in the direction of the bath, smirking, and Naruto rolled his eyes, waving them away.

“If you forget to silence yourselves,” he called threateningly, “I will summon _Boss Frog_ into your gross sex bath.”


	2. Iruka's day begins to improve, and they Plan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> People start doing things

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided to divide chapters by days instead of the zigs and zags dictated by my outline...which left me with chapters one and two being basically halves of the same chapter, but I didn't want to heavily edit a chapter people think they've already read...maybe I'll consolidate later? *shrug* Here's the rest of the day. A couple of lines in chapter one have been changed, nothing major.

In said bath, it was already tensely silent.  

Iruka had stripped with an unchanging, intent frown, pointing Kakashi under the showerhead.

“It’s fine, you go first,” Kakashi tried, but Iruka’s eyes narrowed further.

“You’ll freeze into an ice sculpture.  Your lips are still blue.” He smacked the seals on the sides of the tub to get the water hot, while Kakashi peeled out of his still-damp uniform, and curled his toes against the cold tile under the showerhead.  After a few moments, Iruka joined him, scrubbing irritably with rough soap at whichever part of either of them was within reach. After a minute he said “Good enough,” dumped water over his head, and stalked over to submerge himself in the tub.  Kakashi finished scrubbing blood and ink off his knuckles and from under his nails, watching the stream of bubbles, and wondering whether Iruka is just breathing down there, or yelling at his students again.

Once he was clean, he walked over and nudged Iruka forward and slightly up out of the water.  Iruka drew a long, deep breath.

Kakashi slid in behind Iruka’s hunched back and lowered head, lips thinning as he dipped a cloth in the water.

“...did they understand why you were angry?”

“...no.  Of course not.  It didn’t occur to them the bomb set off by the _slight motion_ of Bakintaro’s ox seal was snug against his ribcage.”

The path of the hot cloth across Iruka’s shoulders paused.  

“...thankfully, it was as effective as those we tested tonight.”

“Lean back, I’ll wash your hair,” Kakashi offered, and Iruka thudded back against him, muttering school-appropriate, appreciative expletives as the steaming water poured over his head.

“They decided potentially _dangerous_ _unknowns_ were better than failing the exam,” Iruka’s voice burbled from half-under the waterline.  

Obviously the flowery shampoo was required.  

“--and this is the _second_ time.  This is why Naruto stole that forbidden scroll,” Iruka laughed softly as Kakashi flourished the glittery shampoo bottle.

“Did you have to say ‘I’m not angry, I’m disappointed’?”

“I was _extremely_ angry,” Iruka sighed as Kakashi worked the shampoo into his hair, sculpting the suds away from his head.  “If you’re sculpting me into a many-tailed beast, that’s about right. I blew their hair back a bit yelling, I think.”

“Mmm,” Kakashi formed a long spike off his head.  “When Naruto and Sakura found strange ninja tools, they were obviously trained--”

“It didn’t take, with this generation,” Iruka sighed, sliding a few inches lower in the water.

“No, I meant--what about a practical exam?  Use all those untested scrolls--”

Iruka sat up.  “Absolutely not, they could have anything in them...but _new_ mystery scrolls and bombs--”

“We could make them technically safe, but very surprising,” Kakashi’s smugness was audible, and Iruka snorted softly, settling back against his chest.

After holding his breath through the bucket of water over his head, Iruka leaned back to kiss up Kakashi’s jaw.  “Thank you,” he ran his thumb over Kakashi’s lip, smiling. “Should I wash yours?”

“I washed before I got in,” Kakashi reminded him, as Iruka waved his arms trying to decide whether getting his hands properly in Kakashi’s silvery hair would necessitate turning around.

“It still feels good,” Iruka clambered awkwardly to reseat himself in a kneel, their noses nearly touching.  He waved a hand alongside the tub, grabbing at bottles, as he leaned in for a kiss, and Kakashi nearly relaxed too far into it to notice he was about to be doused in Chak-rA-Way.

“Mmf!  Hold up,” he grabbed the bottle-wielding arm.  

“Oh,” Iruka frowned at it.  

“I’m not cursed,” Kakashi held his arms up defensively  “Probably.”

“No?”  Iruka grinned at him, investigatively kissing Kakashi’s eyelids, as he tried to duck away, laughing.  “Hrm. Maybe you’re right.” Iruka pulled back, just looking over the familiar scarred eye, silver eyebrows, and quirked mouth for a long moment.  Kakashi ducked his head, and Iruka leaned in for some soft, messy kisses. The glittery shampoo bottle was somewhere behind him--he flailed for the correct bottle, unable to turn properly, but unwilling to push Kakashi off his neck and shoulder.  Once he had the bottle, he went for a leisurely shampooing, scratching his nails gently into Kakashi’s scalp. “Lift your head up,” he grinned against Kakashi’s ear. “I can’t reach.”

Kakashi groaned, but allowed Iruka to tilt his head back, supporting it with one hand, and scrubbing with the other.  

Once he’d finished, Iruka resisted the urge to spray Kakashi’s head with a water jutsu, and gently poured hot water over him with the scoop.  “...we smell like honeysuckle.”

“It smells nothing like food, at least,” Kakashi mumbled, opening his eyes, and shaking off some of the water, like a dog.  “They make food-scented soaps now. I can see it now, Naruto sniffing incessantly next to my ear.”

Iruka inwardly reflected that they also made soap that smelled like _soap_ , and the problem of Naruto hanging from either of their throats by the teeth could thus be avoided, but it wasn’t as though he wanted to discourage Kakashi’s oddly serious contemplation and consumption of bath products.  “Honeysuckle is nice.”

   

Once they were out, and Kakashi was rolling himself some rice balls for dinner, Naruto dropped next to Iruka again.

“...you look...like you’re making scary plans, Iruka-sensei.”

“Do you remember how you used to make clones, Naruto?” Iruka’s eyes narrowed as he sat his exam sheets aside.

“...I remember what I was doing _wrong_ ,” Naruto set his jaw.  “I don’t _do_ that anymore.”

“Kakashi suggested we have them do a practical, basically what we’re doing--testing strange scrolls, and bombs--”

“I think I used up the bombs,” Naruto frowned doubtfully.

“No, we’ll make new tools.”

Kakashi leaned around the corner.  “New _surprising_ tools.  This should be perfect for you, Naruto--do your best and your worst, and label them the same.  I’ll do--”

“No _chidori_ ,” Iruka put in quickly.

“--I have _many techniques_ , as everyone _knows_ ,” Kakashi pointed with the spatula.  “I am the _Copy Ninja--_ ”

“Oh,” Naruto’s eyes widened.  “ _Oh_.  Wait, we should call Sakura--and Ino, she has a huge spider in a scroll she’s been threatening Shikamaru with--”

“It’s snowing,” Iruka raised his eyebrows.

Despite that fact, shortly after the table was surrounded by Chouji discussing techniques with Shikamaru, Sakura grinning evilly as she demonstrated some kind of full-body paralyzation on Lee, Ino vividly describing the motion-sickness inherent in her body-switch to Iruka (who was looking green), and Shino silently piling up a mass of scrolls while insects whorled around his head.  Each group of students, everyone agreed, would have to deal with Shino’s bugs, though only one would have the additional surprise of the enormous spider. “It’s no bigger than Kakashi-sensei’s ninken,” Ino rolled her eyes, and everyone except she and Shino scooted slightly away.

“I will remain alert for my role!” Lee began doing squats, as Iruka hastened to remind him class would not begin until the next morning.  

“Your students are supposed to _survive_ , right,” Shikamaru whispered cautiously, neatly bundling the scrolls, and watching Sakura demonstrate her strength by slowly crushing a log of firewood with one hand.  He accepted a riceball from the mound Kakashi dropped on the table, and everyone huddled to strategize.


	3. Day Two:  Finally, some hot springs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We're getting somewhere now! You may notice the original characters (students, mostly) have stupid pun names. That was fun!

The next day, Iruka regarded the red-rimmed, shadowed eyes around his classroom, and crossed his arms.  “Today we’ll be forming five groups,” he began, pointing around, so Urusako didn’t end up with either the shoutiest or the quietest kids, and Bakintaro wasn’t with Mirai--Bakintaro meant the stream of compliments sincerely, but Mirai didn’t need any opportunities to force-feed him a huge spider.  “I’ll give each group a selection of _unknown ninja tools_ ,” he kept his voice and mouth _level,_ even while watching them sink slowly in their seats under the weight of shame.  He could snicker later, he reminded himself, when class was over, and he was describing the melodramatic dismay over ramen.  “Each group is responsible for documenting the actual contents of the scrolls they recieve. I will be observing, and assigning points accordingly.”

Mirai raised their hand, red-cheeked.  “Did Kakashi-sensei make any of these?”

“Many _experienced_ _shinobi_ took time from their duties to help us,” he narrowed his eyes quellingly.  “We have use of the arena today, so we’ll start there.”

 

The first scroll someone tested, to Iruka’s deadpan delight, teleported Lee into the ring in an explosion of snow.  His defiant screams in Sakura’s honour were nearly as distracting as his kicks, as he declared himself a missing-nin of the Hidden Youth Village, tore the upper half of his exercise suit off, and ran off with an armload of scrolls.  Iruka heard Naruto laughing in the stands.

“ _Sensei_ ,” Urusako yelled, running around him in laps--apparently a Lee-avoiding technique.  Her voice raised and lowered as she blew by. “How are we supposed to--fight genin-- _sensei--_ ”

Hayate shrieked as she opened one of Naruto’s defective clone scrolls, and they collapsed on her like an entire grill of hot mochi, gluing her to the ground.  Sakura roared out of another scroll, cratering the ground with a fist--but Mirai, Iruka saw to his satisfaction, had noted the appearance of Shino’s identical bug scrolls, and was massing the troops to point one at Lee.  Ino’s spider was alternately chasing and being chased, until it began repeatedly running into the wall, and Iruka, grimacing, mercifully ended the jutsu for poor nauseous Tomoko, who’d switched bodies with it.

After nearly a half-hour, Urusako had been claimed as a weapon of volume by several of the class plotters, and she’d been running around yelling “Open no more scrolls!  Bring them to the center!” long enough that Sakura and Lee were facing off against the part of the class that wasn’t puking against the wall next to an enormous yet hesitant spider, or twitching on their side from Sakura’s numbness scrolls.  Handily, even from across the arena, it wasn’t difficult to follow the plotting with Urusako shouting commands like a first mate on a pirate vessel--Mirai had re-sorted the scrolls so a flank of kids had Shino’s three remaining chakra-eating scrolls pointed at Sakura, a larger group was fighting Lee with their own skills, and the remaining class was helping her quickly classify the remaining pile.  Reluctant to turn children into putty, Sakura and Lee were mostly posturing, flexing for the onlookers.  Ino whistled piercingly from the stands.  Iruka resisted a little triumphant spin in place at his class’ serious expressions, keeping his face grim--then rolled his eyes as Naruto leapt into the fray, no longer able to resist.

“Always keep an eye on your surroundings when you’re being _really loud_ _!”_ Naruto hissed as he landed, glowing.  Urusako yelped backwards, momentarily chagrined, before relaying Mirai’s “Second wave!”

That would have gone better if one of the testing scrolls hadn’t been another summon--one left, Iruka considered, after Lee, Sakura, the spider, and now Chouji came barreling out, knocking them all around like toys.  But they got it together again--even, Iruka was pleased to see, the recovering paralyzed kids, and Tomoko, who apparently now felt some sort of kinship with the disoriented spider. She was making a stack of snowballs, though her aim had suffered since returning to two eyes.  Chouji took one between the eyes, and staggered dramatically.

“Oh no, your greatest weapon and your greatest weakness!   _Round things!_ ” Ino yelled from the stands.  

Iruka watched carefully, looking for anyone lagging behind, but while they were obviously outmatched, everyone seemed to be purposeful against the grinning, menacing genin.  It looked like they’d set the final summoning scroll carefully aside, which fit well with his plans.

They actually managed to use one of Sakura’s paralysis scrolls on Lee, but in general seemed to have grasped the danger of unknowns in combat.  It ended suddenly, with the summoning of Shikamaru, who instantly caught all their shadows. Iruka strode over, trying to restrain his pride. At his sign, the genin leapt off to one side, and he stood in front of his class.  He took a deep breath. “I hope you understand the lesson,” he looked around, trying not to smile at Mirai’s battle stance, Hayate’s clone/glue coverage, or Urusako’s bared-tooth snarl. “ _That_...was much more what I would expect from all these smart, observant students.”  

“My sister says everyone’s an idiot sometimes,” Urusako saluted, for some reason.

“That’s true.  Do you think you’re all smarter about strange tools from strange places, now?”

“I got turned into a _spider_ ,” Tomoko mumbled in a  wavery voice, but the others were all nodding frenetically.

“Now, if you all understand how _dangerous_ these could have been,” he eyeballed them all.  Tomoko waved exhaustedly, her arm around the spider.  She was still a bit green, so they matched. “I need to know everything you can tell me about where they came from.”

“Will we get our money back?” Bakintaro yelled.

“I’m _sure_ they kept a careful record of all purchases and the money sitting by.  They were obviously _responsible people_ ,” Iruka stared him down.

“...Kanbutsu Shouten, in class C?” Hayate said, to a sea of sighs and nods.  “His mom trades in Shukubamachi.  She lets him come along. Sometimes a bunch of us go.”

Urusako shot her hand up in the air.  “We didn’t want to get her in trouble!”

“Did she know?”  Iruka expected to wait, but Hayate shook her head immediately.

“We didn’t tell her.  She told us not to talk to her.”

“‘Her’.”  He rubbed his arms against the snowy chill.

“She came up and Yaoya-san chased her off.”

“We talked to her later.”

“She always found us if we just hung around.”

The flaming cheeks surrounding him suggested his students understood his opinion on that.  “What did she look like?”

“Old!”

“She had kanji on her head,” Tomoko put in.

“It said ‘ _deck’_.”

“It said ‘ _green’_ ,” Urusako jumped up and down, correcting Mirai, who narrowed their eyes.  “And she was bald.”

“She was riding a cat,” Tomoko offered, and everyone looked at her.

“What?  No.” Mirai glowered at her.

“No, she was!  When I met her last time, she was riding a cat!”

“Could everyone draw her?  Come on, you’re all steaming,” Iruka suggested, herding them back to class, after they thanked Lee, Chouji, Sakura, Ino, and Shikamaru.  Off to the side, Naruto was beaming at him. Once back in the classroom, he handed out paper, then collected sketches of their suspect--Mirai’s, stubbornly, marked “veranda” on the forehead, while most of the others agreed it was “green”--but they all agreed she was tall--anywhere from twice as tall as Kanbutsu Yaoya-san, to just about as tall as the nearest building, bald, wearing a short green haori, and possibly possessed of a lot of teeth.  Only Tomoko had seen the cat, but her depiction was deeply considered, and looked likely enough.

He tidied the stack, tapping the edges against his desk.  “I will _see_ ,” Iruka allowed his eyebrows to raise, along with the level of suspense, “--whether the Hokage will approve this as your replacement Genin exam.”

“No!” cried a few of the kids, but he waved them down.  A few of them were still scowling, wet-eyed, at their desks when he registered the late hour.

“You all performed well.”  He watched their faces brighten.  “Regardless, I’m proud to have seen the progress this class made today.  Every one of you was impressive. Class dismissed.”

Mirai waved frantically.  “Say thank you to Kakashi-sensei, Iruka-sensei!”  He nodded, rolling his eyes.

Urusako let out a cheer.  Naruto joined in, and Iruka ducked out guiltily, before someone came to find out what all the screaming was about.  They sounded like a herd of ninken, thundering through the building.

 

Having made good his escape, he allowed himself to remember the look on Bakintaro’s face when Lee, shirtless and screaming, popped out of the teleportation scroll, and Iruka snickered all the way to the hall outside the Hokage’s office.  Waiting for Tsunade to finish yelling at her current poor victim, Iruka stood by the window, watching whatever was going on at the training grounds--it looked like more running around than usual.

She was rubbing her face when he came in.

“...Hokage,” he tried, after a few moments, and she groaned, letting her face drop to her desk.

“How do you do it, Umino?”

He blinked at her.

“How do you restrain yourself from murdering them?”

“...it can be difficult,” he frowned.  “Speaking of which. The tools. It sounds as though they’re coming from Shukubamachi.”  

“Well, that figures,” she wrinkled her nose.  “Hard to believe it’s anyone _trained_.”

“Yes.  I have a pile of...artistic renditions of our suspect.”  He frowned down at Hayate’s depiction, which included fangs, horns, and a tengu nose she insisted gave the _correct impression_.  “Abe Tomoko-kun said she was riding a cat _,_ but we have no reason to believe it’s missing-nin, or anything dangerous to a cautious adult.  I’d like permission to investigate myself. Every genin is supposed to undertake a few missions here and there, and I’ve arranged for--”  He spun to see what drew Tsunade’s grim expression over his shoulder.

Kakashi’s voice came from the window, shortly followed by his person.  “I am available for this assignment.” Her expression brightened into a slow grin.

“I really don’t think--” Iruka began, as Tsunade bit her lips, eyebrows raised.  He started again. “Kakashi, do you want a _vacation?_  Are you really trying to get your team this...d-rank, limp goldfish mission?”

“It could turn _into_ a dangerous situation,” Kakashi stood against his side in front of Tsunade’s desk, bumping him a bit to the left.  

Iruka frowned at him for a long second, then addressed Tsunade.  “There’s a replacement to teach classes for me, of course. It would only take a few days for me to check out the sellers in Shukubamachi.”

“...where Jiraiya lurks,” Tsunade leaned back in her chair, eyeing Kakashi, who flushed.  “And where he based the Icha Icha series.”

“Oho, not for the _team_ , then,” Iruka nodded slowly.

“The black marketeers are known to use cat summons.  Still, I am not certain it requires the skills of a jounin,” Tsunade steepled her fingers, as Kakashi narrowed his eyes.

“To know what is right and ignore it is the act of a coward,” Kakashi stood tall, as did Iruka’s eyebrows.  “For the _children_ , Hokage.”

“I would prefer to go myself,” Iruka rolled his eyes, mouth twitching.  “Since I’ve seen most of the incidents--”

“It might require your expertise,” Kakashi nodded.

“--and it’s mostly affected _my students_ ,” Iruka continued.

“...you _two_ are requesting a few days in the town of _love hotels_ , then?” Tsunade smiled sweetly.

Iruka choked back a laugh.  “It is actually _important_ , but I don’t need a jounin if he’s needed _elsewhere_.”

Kakashi elbowed him.  “Without research, we can’t know what kind of expertise is required.”  

“Consider it a belated honeymoon,” Tsunade waved them away, grinning, before she and Kakashi frowned at the window.  

“Hokage,” Sakura skidded inside.  “There’s been more mystery scrolls, this time a mountain of rotten pig carcasses--two genin are buried, so they’d like you to stand by for medical aid.  Hey, Iruka-sensei, Kakashi-sensei!”

Tsunade pursed her lips.  “Just--go, you two. Stop this nonsense.”  

 

Back at their apartment, Kakashi rooted through Iruka’s clothes.  “These, and these, I think,” he held them up.

“My cover is a construction worker just out of the bath?”

“Everything else you own is a flak jacket.”

“Oh, I know,” Iruka opened his eyes very wide, “We’ll just have to go to Gai for undercover costumes.  I’m sure he has crates of his stretchy exercise wear.”

“No.”  Kakashi shoved an armload of clothes at him.  “No. _No_.  Find something.  Anything but that.”

“I could tear the top half off and declare I’m from the Hidden Village of Youth.”

Kakashi went very still, then shuddered.

“That shudder better not have been imagining me.”

“Why are you making me think about Gai on our honeymoon?   _Stop_.”

After some judicious sorting, Iruka had what he assured him was acceptable winter menswear for a casual honeymoon--a padded brown hanten and hakama, which looked bulky, but appealingly warm.  Kakashi was fiddling with his hair in the mirror, trying to get it to flatten and stay. After watching for a few minutes, Iruka came up behind him, lifted it off, and pulled a knitted cap down over his eye, following up with a matching scarf around his face.  “How’s that? Might be a bit warm indoors, but we can look for a lighter one.”

“No,” Kakashi’s eyes narrowed at the bright red and white stripes.  “It’s perfect.”

“...how about these, then--”

“They don’t match.”

“...you want...matching colors?”  Iruka watched Kakashi look himself over in the mirror, inspecting the bare stripe of face visible through layers of thick scarf.  “I’m just saying, Gai might have some nice Beast of Konoha undergarments, maybe there’s some red and white in there--”

Kakashi stubbornly ignored him.  “Blue, maybe?”

Iruka rolled his eyes, holding out the remaining hanten he owned, purely to wrap up in after a bath.  “There’s gray, or the black one.” He made a mental note to look for one loud enough to compete with the scarf, possibly plaid.  Apparently after decades of dull Konoha green, Kakashi wanted a dramatic change, even if it made him look a bit like brightly colored candy.

“Hrm,” Kakashi spun slowly in place, eventually consenting to pull the black hanten over the ends of his scarf, and tuck his white kimono into some grey hakama.  “...we’ll still want to cover the scars,” he pointed up to where his beanie covered his eye, then Iruka’s nose.

“Or we could just go _ask questions_ , as people,” Iruka sighed, but submitted.  He looked odd in the mirror, sans scar, it felt even more odd to drop his forehead protector in a drawer, and oddest of all leaving the house in his after-bath winter housewear, but they’d agreed it was ridiculous to carry luggage full of their shinobi uniforms.  They weren’t intending to fight--there was little chance a _competent_ shinobi had any dealings in this debacle--and even if they did, they would hardly have time to change.  He felt ridiculous running out of town in the thick layers, like a toddler attending a snowball fight.

 

“How well do you know Shukubamachi?” Iruka asked, as they ran towards it, bounding to a higher branch to see ahead.  “The Hokage’s suggestions will be helpful, but--”

“It’s represented _in detail_ in the _Icha Icha_ novels,” Kakashi said brightly.  “He based one of the primary locations on a gambling den the Hokage frequents, and another on Tsurunoyu, where we’ll stay.”

“Oh, will we.”

“It’s the largest hot spring inn, with the best food,” Kakashi said smugly, and Iruka slumped slightly in surrender.  “We can ask the staff for information, before we steam in the outdoor bath…”

“We are going to _work_ , you know--”

“All seasonal local specialties for meals--”

Iruka groaned, brushing snow off his head, and Kakashi’s eyes smiled at him from between layers of scarf and hat.

“We’ll warm our feet at the in-room hearth when we’re done bathing--”

“...you win, how much farther,” Iruka laughed softly.  

An enormous centipede reared up at them, and with a glance between them they both trod on it, letting it fall and thrash angrily behind them as they ran on.  

“Naruto said Konohamaru had been invited several times to come with friends to buy ‘amazing jutsu’,” Iruka sighed.  “We’re lucky no one has gone _missing_.”

“Probably the wildlife would have avoided a group including Urusako Oukuchi,” Kakashi laughed.  “She sounds like ten shinobi, not half of one.”

“She did well, today, though.  I may put her in a group with Mirai more often--they have lots of ideas for her, and she’ll yell at problems _before_ Mirai murders anyone.  Like an alarm.”

“Better for everyone, then,” Kakashi raised his eyebrows.

“I smell sulfur,” Iruka inhaled appreciatively.  “We’re close.”

 

Between Kakashi’s excited knowledge of his favourite book series, and Iruka’s unerring nose for hotsprings, they homed in on Tsurunoyu without difficulty.  

“Look, they’ve built kamakura,” Kakashi pointed to the small, candle-lit snow huts lighting the path.  “It mentions those in--”

“Yes, later, there’s snow,” Iruka pulled him inside.  

“Welcome!” cried the lady behind the counter, beaming between them.  Kakashi immediately trotted over and asked whether they had a honeymoon suite (they didn’t), and began consulting with her in hushed and enthusiastic tones.  Iruka rolled his eyes, setting his bag on the floor, and perusing the lobby pamphlets. A young woman in a snowy-tree-covered yukata bowed to him, grinning. “Honeymoon, huh?  I can take your bag.”

He nodded, wiping the melting snow off his face.

“There’re private baths,” she winked.

He felt his cheeks warm.  “We’ll certainly appreciate the...privacy,” he tried, feeling awkward in his baggy hakama pants and no flak jacket, with concealing jutsu over his scars, in an obviously expensive inn, with a stranger dimpling at him.  

“Hard to get alone time?” she waggled her eyebrows.  “You’ve come to the _right place_.”

“It is difficult,” he smiled back at her obvious enthusiasm.  “He’s...an important man, so it’s hard to monopolize him.”

“Difference in status,” she covered her mouth in glee.  “Is it difficult, marrying above your station? You’re so brave.”

Iruka blinked, then gamely continued.  “It _is_ , he’s, ah, well known and in demand amongst...similarly remarkable people.  I’m not nearly as accomplished, or talented. There’s a huge gap in ability…” he frowned over at Kakashi signing them up for what sounded like every imaginable service, “and _pay_.”

“We’re all people,” she patted his arm sympathetically, and Iruka nodded.

“Blood doesn’t determine what kind of person you are,” he tried.  “I mean, obviously family is important, but--”

She gasped.  “You’re a commoner, and he’s--”

“We’re travel writers,” Kakashi told the counter lady happily.

“He is far above me in publication,” Iruka nodded, wondering how this had gotten so far away from him.  “His house far outstrips my own in sales.”

 


	4. The innkeeper, the yakuza, and the foundling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We meet a big pool of suspects, and have to pay close attention to clothes and suffixes.

Iruka awoke to almost complete darkness, and a lack of fine, tickly hair against his neck.  He lifted his head, causing a bellows of cold air in the futon, and groaned as he rubbed the damp skin between his ear and shoulder. Tugging the blanket along like a snail’s shell,  he crawled until he was closer to the irori, the sunken fire pit in the middle of the room. The half-full pot of tea he’d had with dinner was at the edge of the fire, and he wrapped his hands around a lukewarm cup.  His padded, plain grey nenneko from home was warm around his shoulders. There would be ridiculous nenneko available tomorrow in town--something for Kakashi to wear. Maybe a pattern of a huge lucky cat. Something, Iruka reflected, as unlike the Konoha flak jacket uniform as possible.  Once the water in the kettle had boiled and he’d brewed fresh, considerably less bitter tea, he took it and both cups and meandered out to the decking overlooking the hot spring.

Kakashi was perched at the edge.  The sulphurous steam rose in the chill to frost his eyelashes and hair, and Iruka held out the second cup.  Kakashi clutched it close, hunching gratefully.

“Want some company?”  Iruka waited for the slow nod.   

“If it’s you,” Kakashi glanced up.  “Just a restless night, not a haunted one.”

“I could haul the futon out here.”

“Yes,” Kakashi nodded emphatically.  “The moon’s reflecting in the spring.  I was just thinking up a description for my glowing account of this inn.”

“Eugh,” Iruka watched him, appreciating the pink the frost had brought up in Kakashi’s cheeks and ears rather more than the rippling water.  “They’ll go above and beyond trying to please you, and then wait excitedly for this book to come out. You couldn’t have just said you were a writer?”

“She needed distracting from the, ah, available marital aids,” Kakashi reddened further at Iruka’s snort.  “It’s hard to properly appreciate this moon without sake,” he sighed pointedly, and Iruka laughed.

“The moon’ll be full tomorrow,” Iruka knelt to whisper against the frost-glittered fabric of Kakashi’s mask, “--unless you want me to _leave_ right now and find--”  An explosion of red light lit up the sky to the east--the direction they’d come, following the scent of bathhouse sulphur from the edge of town.  

They exchanged a glance, resigned, and Kakashi reluctantly let go of the handful of Iruka’s nenneko he’d grabbed to pull him closer.  He lifted his thumb to his mouth to bite it. As the blood balled up and threatened to trickle, he smacked his hand flat on the decking to summon the two of his ninken with the soft, floppy ears and low build of scenthounds.  “Bisuke. Goruko. Go check out the source of that explosion and report back.” They barked a quiet acceptance, trotting around each other over to a sculpturally trimmed evergreen, and balancing along a branch to drop outside the privacy wall of the bath.  

Iruka sighed.  “I suppose I’ll go ask what’s going on, since a _travel writer_ would probably be interested.”  First, though, he nuzzled Kakashi’s shoulder, pressing his face between the cold fabric and warm neck.

“Hurry up,” Kakashi shivered.  “I’ll drag the futon out here.”

 

Iruka found a cluster of solemn people at the gate to the inn yard--aside from the expected yukata-dressed hot springs appreciators, there were three with prominent tattoos--tsubaki flowers, he thought distractedly, the woman was bare-shouldered in the snow and _covered_ in bright red tsubaki flowers--another woman in silk kimono with an understated pattern of green on cream pine branches, and another two nearly immobilized in hair adornments, layers of flowery painted silk kimono, enormous bows, and feature-obscuring makeup.  He took note of the one with the snow rabbit theme to describe to Urusako-kun. Possibly kabuki actors, or geisha, he thought, popping in to the hot spring after a late night’s work. The young woman who’d led he and Kakashi to their room waved to him, her wide smile a little strained. She must have been working late as well--the setting moon shone prettily on her still-tidy hair, held in a perfectly symmetrical winged knot by a painted crane comb--but her skin shone blueish-pale, and her knuckles were white clenching the edges of her indigo-patterned sleeves.

She kept her voice low.  “That...sound. Light. It came from the Kagiya workshop.”  Iruka felt his eyes widen. “There’s plenty of snow. In this much snow,” she took a deep breath, “--we should be safe even...in the worst case.”  Everyone was craning cautiously at the gate, wanting to be the first to know of licks of flame at the town walls, remembering a different, long-ago firework artisan Kagiya’s genius apprentice Tamaya, his workshop explosion, and the raging fires of Sumidagawa.  The tsubaki flower woman was pointing down the street, and the bystander with the tattooed claws visible on his chest hurried away.

Iruka nodded, preparing, if necessary, to blow their covers with a water release jutsu, but after several more minutes a guard ran up to the gates.  “No harm done,” she panted. “No--no harm. Just an--an accident, a small one, in a field of snow. No--no harm.” She let herself tip to lean against the wall, closing her eyes.

Everyone breathed deeply, people leaning against the gate and each other.  One stranger hugged him, smelling of the sulphur in the bath, and shivering in their thin cotton indoor wear.  The tsubaki flower woman showed the guard a charm, before releasing her to knock on more doors--“It’s from my child, to ward off evil,” she explained.  “I guess it works!” The woman in pine-tree-worked silk bent to brush snow off her lower hems, teetered, laughed and flailed as Iruka grabbed her hand before the taut kimono around her knees tipped her right into a snowbank.  She squeezed his shoulder, patting his arm in thanks. “All I could think was I hadn’t even gotten in the hot spring yet, and I wondered whether it would be worth it to run back and dive in now, kimono and all.”

He snorted, cocking his head.  “Definitely worth it.”

The joy was contagious, the bells in the two extremely elaborate headresses tinkling pleasantly as their wearers laughed and talked, and Iruka grinned back, reflecting that as defenseless as civilians were, they were bewilderingly unprepared for sudden death.    

“Sute,” Pine-tree-kimono  introduced herself breathlessly.  “The character for ‘foundling’. I’m _thrice_ blessed in my survival, now.”  Her kimono was short-sleeved and grey-brown like a nesting bird compared to the red, orange, blue, and pink plumage of the women she stood shoulder to shoulder with.  They introduced themselves as Fukurou, snowy owl--“I belong here,” she whispered, smiling, cocking her head at the snow, and Mameryou, which Iruka mouthed a couple times with a perplexed frown only to be informed that yes, the characters were ‘dragon’ and ‘bean’.  

“I am tiny, but fierce,” she held Fukurou’s hand tightly.

“...Iruka,” he bowed around, and they giggled, bowing back.  “‘Dolphin’,” he gave his own name character meaning, watching for more traffic on the road.  

“Yuwa,” the inn lady bowed neatly.  “How lovely to have a dolphin in our baths.  I hope you don’t mind the heat.” She was smiling politely around, but her eyes were red and shiny.  “Would anyone like a cup of tea?”

At the suggestion, people laughingly remembered they were standing under a cold moon in calf-deep snow, and pressed inside and around the banked irori, where Yuwa-san knelt with a sigh of relief.  The tsubaki-flower woman snapped her fingers at the third tattooed person--the dyed blue dragon stretching from his knee to his shoulder continued in tattoo form up his neck, Iruka noticed, amused.  

Sute-san lingered by the door, listening.  “We’re all supposed to be meeting with the tax inspector,” she smiled quickly, bobbing her head in what looked less like nervousness and more like a bird.  “She said she’d be back, but she’s very late. Are you travelling?”

He nodded.  “Honeymoon.”

“Oh,” she winced.  “What timing.” Iruka raised his eyebrows, opening his mouth to ask, but she waved him off, laughing.  “I’m sorry. Just--the scare. Honeymoon on fire! Yuwa-san knows where to find me, though,” she patted her understated kimono, the silk an obvious signal of someone in good stead with the local government.  “If you need any information. I’m always happy to help visitors.”

He nodded again, slowly, and Yuwa beckoned him down to the irori, holding out a cup of tea.    

“I think I’ll return to our room,” he smiled, and she smiled shakily back.  There didn’t seem any particular call for ninjutsu. Iruka waited until everyone seemed to have relaxed with their tea, and then slunk off, but started at finding Yuwa at his elbow.

“I just...feel I should check in with Tsuru-hime,” she smiled up, the light from the irori catching her round face and reflecting like the moon in the dark hall.

“Tsuru-hime?” he slowed his walk to match the short steps her yukata allowed.

“...here, this way, it’s no longer a walk for you,” she tugged at his sleeve.  The hall she led him to was lit by the moon on paper screens along one side, and a bright doorway on the other.  “Tsuru-hime would have warned us, if there were really any danger.” Yuwa knelt in the doorway. “She has always protected this house.”

There was a rope of twisted paper across the doorway, barring off a pristine room with several child-sized kimono, a small shelf of books, a lovely enameled shell-box, and the flat pebbles Iruka recognized for playing marbles.  

“Another grave?” he guessed, kneeling beside her, and she blinked at him.  

“Oh, no, she isn’t--her grave is outside.”

He raised his head for a slow nod.

“Tsuru-hime was named for the same cranes as the inn,” she smiled, pulling a mandarin orange out of her sleeve, and sitting it on the threshold.  “She would be my...oh, seven or so greats--grand-aunt. She was six.”

Iruka nodded, eying the kimono--new, he thought--certainly not over a century old.  The yukata he could see the right side of without leaning into the room looked like a similar design to what Yuwa was wearing.  “This was her room?”

“This is her room,” Yuwa nodded.  “She died in the summer...our best indigo crafter, A-Aoi-san, was honoured by my grandmother’s request to replace her summer yukata.  There--” she pointed with her whole hand to the hanging blue-and-white yukata with swirling goldfish, then touched her own yukata. “You can see the same hand as in my clouds, here.”

“Illness?”

“A short one.”  Her jaw worked. “The doctors had seen nothing like it.  Very...very few recovered. She protects this house, now.  She and Tsubaki-dono protect the village.”

“The woman with tattoos?”

Yuwa snorted a laugh.  “Tsubaki-dono...has many flowers, yes.”

Realizing the room was warmly lit only by the small lamp in the doorway, he frowned, leaning inward, and Yuwa smiled.  “She doesn’t show herself to strangers, but she is always warm and bright.”

He nodded once again, suddenly exhausted, and felt the need to discuss something other than dead children.  “Thank you for protecting this house, Tsuyu-hime,” he bowed, and Yuwa smiled.

“She warns us, when the sickness returns...and for other things.  Tonight was no real danger.”

He smiled back, but got to his feet.  “Thank you for introducing me.”

“It’s very late,” she nodded.  “Sleep well. Would you like me to wait breakfast a bit?”

“ _Yes_ ,” he rubbed his face, laughing.  “Thank you, again.”

The walk around Tsuru-hime’s room mirrored the one he’d taken before to their room, so indeed, it was not out of the way, but he slammed the screen open in relief at his arrival.

At the sight of the blanket-wrapped silhouette at the edge of the hot spring, he thumped across the grass mat floor to yank the edge of the futon away from Kakashi’s side and wrap around him like an affectionate octopus.

“...you’re blue,” Kakashi whispered against his head.  “Did you hear--your _fingers_ are _freezing_ \--”

“We need a dip,” Iruka braced himself and stood, letting his clothes fall, and grimaced swishing one foot in the water--with the snowmelt still drying on his legs, it felt like the spring was frying him crisp in hot oil.

“ _Snow and nenneko_ ,” Kakashi intoned:

_“Gleaming shoulders in moonlight--_

_Lacking in sake.”_

Iruka snickered, flexing in several positions to Kakashi’s appreciative drumming on the deck, and let his eyes flicker shut as he slid into the spring up to his chin.  “The bad news is, no sake is coming.”

“Reality is ever imperfect,” Kakashi dropped to sit on the edge next to him, letting his feet kick in the pleasant heat, and tugging Iruka’s head over to lean against his thigh.  

“There’s a Kagiya workshop outside town…” Iruka trailed off contentedly.

“Kagiya, really.”

“Mhrm,” Iruka let himself slide down until his ears filled with water.  Kakashi’s fingers raked through his floating hair. It wasn’t until a long but not long enough while later, when Iruka felt his shoulders hauled upwards, that he opened his eyes again.  “What?” he frowned up.

“Your nose was about to go under water,” Kakashi’s eyes crinkled over his mask.  “Again.”

“The hot water is more important,” Iruka felt his eyes start to slide shut, and he jerked his head upright, groaning.  “No, wait, you’re right. I’m going to drown. Get me out.”

Kakashi laughed, yanking on both his hands, until Iruka levered himself upright and staggered light-headedly back into their room.  

“...there were some people Naruto would describe as ‘underworld’ out there,” Iruka yawned, rubbing his face.  He allowed Kakashi to steer him over to the irori, stretching his hands out to bask in the warmth. “Probably.  Tattoos everywhere. Oh. There’s a Kagiya workshop out there. A guard came and said ‘No harm done’.”

“The suspense was terrifying,” Kakashi laughter was soft against his neck as he manhandled Iruka into his layers again, when Iruka tried to just wrap himself in the futon.  “My true love returns with tidings, only to sink up to the forehead in water. Were you drowning yourself in fear of explosions? There was no way to know.”

“You’re so brave and forbearing,” Iruka muttered into his sleeves.

“Bisuke and Goruko returned,” Kakashi slid an arm around him.  “They thought there were definitely some materials in common with the garbage we tested.”

“Fgmumf?” Iruka asked indignantly, before lifting his face out of the layer of futon.  “Those garbage bombs were _not_ Kagiya.”

“Maybe we should go tomorrow and ask around.  It’s odd.”

“You want to meet a Kagiya,” Iruka grinned at him.

“I do very much want to meet one of the most celebrated fireworks artisans in the five nations,” Kakashi nodded several times, and Iruka leaned into his warmth, pulling several layers of futon closer around them.  The heat felt good against his cheeks and closed eyes.

 

Iruka woke in a nest of warmth, squirming between more knees than seemed likely to belong to only two people, and smiled resignedly up at Kakashi’s soft maskless grin. The knock came again.  Kakashi yanked his mask up, and Iruka staggered out of the pile of blankets to try and stretch himself into an upright position. “Euuugh,” he groaned.

“Age comes early to the ninja,” Kakashi’s muffled voice came from within the sushi roll of futon, and Iruka stuck his tongue out at him.

“Come,” Iruka called, and the door slid open to reveal Yuwa, still as tidy in indigo-worked cotton, today with standing and flying cranes.  She handed in two trays, tugging at her yukata, and Iruka brightened, glancing back at Kakashi. “Your yukata is lovely--”

She drew herself up, red-rimmed eyes crinkling as she beamed.  “Aoi-san is a genius! Look, here at the bottom, this is our biggest spring, and rock garden, and the waterfall here, isn’t it _lovely_ \--”

“I was thinking of picking something out--” he nodded at Kakashi, who smirked.  “--maybe something in scarecrows,” Iruka frowned back at him.

She padded over to show them in the better light coming through the screens.  “I don’t know about _scarecrows_ , but Aoi-san is so talented, there are so many beautiful things, I’m never able to choose--” She smoothed the fabric, smiling down.  In the white light of morning, her face was noticeably pink.

“Ah,” Kakashi raised his eyebrows as Iruka handed over a tray.  

“This was a gift,” she said softly, pressing her hands to her hot cheeks.  “Probably. Aoi-san said our springs were _inspiring_ , but I had--I had rambled on, about the cranes landing here, I wanted--I wish we could have seen them together!  I mean--I wish Aoi-san could have seen them, of course. They--they were so beautiful, against the snow, and Aoi-san is an _artist_.  And the next time I stopped by the shop…of course… of course I-I had to have it.”

Iruka felt himself starting to flush from second-hand awkwardness, and wrinkled his nose.  He felt Kakashi’s shoulder shift with restrained laughter.

“Aoi-san is a _friend_ , then?” Kakashi asked, and she swiveled, eyes wide.

“I’m--I’m so--I am a faithful customer, of course--I’ll give you directions to Aoi-san’s shop, but I really--Aoi-san is--someone very talented--would you like some more tea?”

“Does Aoi-san design art for _everyone?_ ” Kakashi asked, voice sly, and her face shifted several degrees closer to the bright enamel red of her comb.  

“No!  Of course--Aoi-san--wouldn’t--”

Iruka, seeing no escape from Kakashi’s sudden attack of romantic nosiness, sighed.  “Do join us for tea.”

She dropped to near by the irori, hands folded neatly, and took a deep breath.  “Thank you. I believe I could use a cup. Last night was exciting,” she smiled at Iruka, who poured one.

“Who were--” he began, but she was beaming between them.  

“How did--if you don’t mind me asking--and nothing to do with Aoi-san!  Ah, how--how did you know? The two of you. That--that it _was_ the two of you, or that, ah, you _wanted_ it to be--”

Iruka paused, cup in midair, before replacing the teapot near the fire, and felt Kakashi’s attention zero in as well.

“Know?” he tried, hopefully.

“You thought of something,” Kakashi leaned closer.  “You paused.”

After a moment’s disbelief at this betrayal, Iruka thought fast.  “I hated him in school,” he smiled at Yuwa. “This horrible teacher kept dividing us into group assignments, and he was always the _arrogant_ one, ignoring the other two, just trying to divide tasks--”

Kakashi jerked back.  “I wasn’t--you--maybe I just couldn’t _hear_ you from the _river_ , you dolphin--”

“No,” Yuwa held her tea up to cover her mouth, but her delighted eyes gave her away.

“ _Yes_ ,” Iruka nodded to Yuwa.  “He always walked ahead of everyone and ignored everything they said--”  

“He was always falling in the river,” Kakashi tried again.

“The third group member was in _love_ with him and would talk about _nothing else_ \--”

“Oh _no_ ,” Yuwa laughed, staring at Kakashi.

“That is only _partially_ true,” Kakashi put in, but Iruka just grinned at Yuwa.  

“This man has tied children to tree stumps,” Iruka sighed.  “Withheld lunch.”

“This is _misleading.”_  

“Because you’d never?” Iruka smiled over.

She bit her lips, mouth twitching.  “How cruel of you, Kakashi-sensei!”

Kakashi’s back stiffened.  “ _He_ vandalized a village _monument_ \--there were _graves--_ ”

“Oh, my,” her eyes widened.

“I was a troubled child,” Iruka’s smile was wide.

“We actually began _talking_ in that graveyard,” Kakashi attempted to direct the conversation.

“Oh,” she looked between them, eyes wide.  “During the..?”

“Oh, no, we just visited graves.  It was so awkward,” Iruka snorted.  “Neither of us wanted to cry with the other one there, like two graves away.”

“ _You_ felt awkward,” Kakashi’s eyes widened in emphasis.  “Probably because you’d painted nose hairs on the--”

“Because you were crying over there--” Iruka shot a sidelong glance at Yuwa.  “He’d bawl and tell the graves all these explicit stories, he had no shame at _all-_ -”

“I did not--” Kakashi barked a laugh.  “What--you have _no idea_ what I was saying--”

“Oh, my,” she gasped.  “And you befriended him?”

“We--” Kakashi tried to cut in.

“He met his first boyfriend then,” Iruka sighed.  “The personification of youth and fiery spirit, and, I’ve heard, prone to wearing extremely revealing clothes--”

Kakashi sputtered.  “What do you mean you’ve _heard_ , you’ve seen him tear that thing off at every opportunity--”

“Well, yes,” Iruka sighed.  “We’ve all seen him piggyback you around the entire town, bare torsos pressed together--”

“Oh, _my_ ,” she hid her grin.  “How scandalous.”

“No, no, no,” Kakashi tried to cover Iruka’s mouth, but yanked his hand away when Iruka calmly licked it.  “I did not, this isn’t--”

“ _Then_ he ran off with this scarred older man three times his age,” Iruka told her, over Kakashi’s revolted groan, and she clasped his hands melodramatically, their noses almost touching.  She was a beautiful person, he thought, they should exchange letters. “I thought he was lost forever, and I was really a bit fine with that--”

“You’re making me into--” Kakashi, caught in the _web of lies_ he had, himself, _prompted_ , trailed off.  “This is much more complicated--”

“ _This_ one was a corrupt officer,” Iruka whispered, and Yuwa gasped satisfyingly.  “Of course Kakashi wasn’t having _that_.”

Kakashi’s ears reddened as his eyes narrowed further.  “None of this even answers the question.”

“Did he report him?” Yuwa whispered back, and Iruka let his grin grow.  

“He did!  He protected a man I respect very much.  Who raised me,” he smirked over, letting it grow fond.  

“He’s a hero,” she beamed between them, and Iruka leaned his head to the side, smiling.  “So what’s your story?”

Kakashi sighed.  

“Which means he's embarrassed, and he’s never loved me at all."

“He was this weirdo who kept yelling at me,” Kakashi held his cup out for more tea, sharing a grin with Yuwa as Iruka’s head jerked back.  “He shouted about some kid he didn’t like, he didn’t like me promoting someone he didn’t feel was ready--”

“ _That_ was when, more precisely,” Iruka said quietly, then accepted more tea, slowly sipping as the other two waited with bated breath.  “When you believed in...my little brother. More than anyone else ever had, More than I did. That was the moment.”

“Really?” Kakashi scooted closer.

“No, you’re right, I’m probably mistaken.”

“Oh, no, I need to hear all about this sudden realization, was it my eyes?”

“I didn’t know about his ego at the time,” Iruka confessed to Yuwa.

She smiled into her tea, swallowing hard.  “You two are so comfortable. Maybe someday I’ll…”

“Talk to Aoi-san?” Iruka raised his eyebrows, ready for a new subject.  He could feel his cheeks burning over his moment of sincerity--they were probably emitting steam.  She groaned, hiding behind her tea.

Kakashi was not ready to be redirected.  “He hugged me, out of nowhere,” he leaned into Iruka’s side, and Iruka slid an arm around him, shrugging.  He leaned his hot face against Kakashi’s shoulder for a long moment, then raised his head, clearing his throat.

“Yuwa-san, I was speaking with Sute-san last night, and she mentioned our very poor timing.  What’s going on?” Kakashi stilled against him.

“Oh,” she swallowed again, laughed, and smoothed her kimono.  “She shouldn’t--I’m--I’m sure it’s fine,” she clasped her hands.  “Koukyuu-sama. The tax official, who we were to meet with last night.  She has not returned.”

“A...tax official?” Iruka repeated.

“You aren’t familiar with her?”  She blinked. “Koukyuu-sama...sets the taxes we must pay, in rice.” Her mouth quirked.  “Of course, we do not grow much, here. Our local gods favor hot springs, and gambling, and...indigo.  She decides how much we can afford--” she winced. “Koukyuu-sama is...she...it is very expensive, you see, to buy rice to pay the tax.  The entirety of the farmer’s reported rice crop goes to the tax, so to sell us rice, they must...plan, of course? And guarding and transporting that much rice--” she smoothed her yukata.  “Koukyuu-sama has...developed a system, where she collects the taxes herself, as...money. A great deal of money.”

Kakashi and Iruka exchanged a look.  “She travels, with all this money? Surely she hires ninja?”

“Oh, no,” she sighed.  “She...she is protected not only by her status at court, but also by themembers of the Tsubaki-rengo.  They have been looking for her, but Tsubaki-dono has lost her as well. Sute-san wished for everything to be handled...quickly, but Koukyuu-sama does not...she enjoys her visits.”  She swallowed, taking a deep breath. “She wishes for everyone to...make their case, before her. She would normally sit in the finest room, taking visitors. Tsubaki-dono calls it holding court.”

“Small wonder everyone was so tense,” Iruka raised his eyebrows.

Yuwa nodded.  “She got in yesterday afternoon, and her luggage is in her room.  She...may have been the person who set off the fireworks, but no one was hurt.”

“Why on earth would she have wandered off in the snow in the middle of the night?”  Iruka wrinkled his nose.

“She may have...had demands of Kagiya-sensei.”  She frowned. “She has the power to make life...very much harder, for everyone.”

“I can imagine,” Kakashi cocked his head at Iruka, who began collecting the info on Aoi-san’s indigo workshop.  When they’d finished grilling her, and deservedly complimented her on the breakfast, they ushered her out.

“It’s a bit uncomfortable to think that rice is for us,” Iruka grimaced, then shivered, imagining the snowy trek to the fireworks workshop.  

“The money is not,” Kakashi grinned, lifting his mask to lean in for a kiss.  “And I suspect Koukyuu-sama is keeping most of that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After working so hard to mimic Stiles Stilinski's voice, it's odd to write characters that were originally in a language I'm not fluent in, and translated by all different levels of skill. I have an idea of their personality, but not much of their voices.
> 
> Was the Japanese too much? I tried to explain what everything was, and thought the suffixes at the very least differentiated between some kinda similar names. They're out in Traditional Japan now! (A well-researched amalgam of 'every bit I liked and not the boring ones'.) Woo!
> 
> Let me know your thoughts, I'd love to hear them!


	5. The bombmaker, some embarrassing declarations, and unnatural light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Iruka's actual nemesis is the snow.

Kakashi tromped happily through the snow, flapping his arms at Iruka when he lagged behind.  The ends of his scarf snapped in the chill wind.

“If you’d walk faster, it wouldn’t be as cold,” he called back, and Iruka turtled further into his layers.  

“If she hadn’t arrived yesterday night, I’d blame this tax official for our pirated ninja tools,” Iruka sighed.  “How convenient that would have been.”

Kakashi snorted, waiting until Iruka caught up, and bumping their shoulders together.  “Still might be her, it sounds like she’s every other kind of waste of air.”

“We could just throw her through the Hokage’s window, run back, and dive in the hot spring,” Iruka flapped his layered arms, audibly smiling.  “It’d be _much drier,_ running across the branches.  Whose idea was it, again, to pretend to be civilian snowmen?”  He blew into his hands. “I’m warmer than in my flak jacket, but I can barely move--it’s like I’m a toddler and this whole outfit is _one huge diaper--_ ”

“There!” Kakashi pointed.  “Kagiya!”

Frozen nearly stiff as Iruka was, there was no resisting the excitement of meeting such a famous artisan, and he bumped Kakashi’s shoulder back as they nodded to the bundled-up child tottering toward them at the open gate.

“Who are you,” the child said, in a dull, snuffly voice.

“We’d like to speak to Kagiya-sensei,” Iruka’s muffled voice came from within two layers of scarf.

The child sighed, then turned to look at a building emitting thumping noises.  “She’s in there. Bang on the door first, so she doesn’t kill you with a mallet.”  

“Noted,” Kakashi’s eyes crinkled as he grinned under his scarf, and he drug Iruka over.  The snow crunched behind them as the definitely-civilian child followed, tromping behind a snow-covered bush to crouch and peer over with narrowed eyes.

“Come!” a voice yelled, when he banged on the door, and Iruka reached around him to slide the door open, tumbling them both through into the warmth.  They were surrounded by crates and tables covered in lengths of bamboo. In the middle, a short, broad woman in loose hakama pants, an apron, and faded floral back tattoos was methodically inserting a wooden dowel into each bamboo tube and giving it a single smack with the mallet to tamp the powders inside.  

“It’s warm in here,” Iruka unwound a layer of scarf, frowning around.  “You wouldn’t have a fire--”

“We’re over the hot spring network.” she said.  “Who are you?” Her shoulders and arms flexed as she hammered rapid-fire, once at each tube, with little attention, but complete precision.

“We’re writers,” Kakashi bragged, and Iruka snorted.  

“I write children’s books,” he smiled over.  “If we don’t get in the way, would it be possible to watch you for a bit, and ask you some questions?”

She paused, frowning over.  “Fireworks aren’t for children.”

“Well, no, of course not.  We do a pretty brisk business with the hidden villages, as well, though I was thinking of something more general--the life of a firework artisan.  The name ‘Kagiya’ is well known, even there.”

“...you came all this way to watch me making fireworks?” she leaned her head back, twirling the mallet around her finger.

“Oh,” Iruka laughed, shaking his head.  “Not exactly, no--”

“--we’re on our _honeymoon_ ,” Kakashi waggled his visible eyebrow.  “I just found out the exact moment he fell in _love_ with me.”

Iruka rolled his eyes.  “My misfortune you found the switch, I suppose. Whoops, love!  Suddenly!”

She cocked her head, rubbing her closely shorn grey head.  “I feel like you’re lying, and I have no idea why.”

“No!”  Iruka barked a laugh.

“Not really!” Kakashi said at the same time, and they stared fixedly at her, mouths twitching, with reddening faces.  

“Yuwa-san at the baths was grilling us all morning about our relationship,” Iruka tried.  “We’re feeling a bit awkward about it.”

“Are you?” Kakashi leaned in to him.  “About your _explosion of feelings_ when I--how did you put it-- _believed in your protege,_ even when you had no faith at _all--_ ”

“There was no such--I realized you--could be _important_ , is all, that you weren’t entirely a tardy waste of time--and don’t--I had _faith,_ ” Iruka sputtered, laughing as he held Kakashi’s scarf-muffled kisses at bay.

“Oho, what were you yelling at me?  ‘He isn’t ready, Kakashi, I don’t want him disappointed, Kakashi--’”

“We are here to talk about _books--_ and I definitely do not sound like that.”

“Are we?” Kakashi’s eyes crinkled as he grinned under the scarf.

Iruka rubbed his forehead.  “ _Books_ and _fireworks_ , unless you wanted to keep practicing your falsetto, it does need the work--”

“You realized ‘I _could be_ _important_ ’,” Kakashi mused.

“We actually came for the hot springs,” Iruka told her, leaning around Kakashi’s shoulder, and she raised her eyebrows.  “To drown him,” he narrowed his eyes at Kakashi, who hummed inquiringly. “It seemed like a honeymoonish thing to do.”

She rolled her eyes, but pointed her mallet at Kakashi.  “I know you, you’re in the Bingo Book.” She leaned on her squeaky left leg to turn the mallet on Iruka.  “You aren’t.” Her frown deepened.

“Nooo,” Iruka ignored Kakashi’s cackles and his own heating cheeks.  “We are on our honeymoon, though, and I do have some questions.”

She turned her frown on Kakashi, who nodded, smiling, and then she sighed.  “Ask.”

Iruka cleared his throat.  “It’s--what are you making right now?”

“The tax official visited last night,” she grunted.  “There’s been...another outbreak of korori. In the capital.  There’s the new medicine, but they can’t--people are frightened.   They’re just--floating down the river--and she wants a big display to cheer spirits, and soothe the dead.  As a _gift_.  To the people.  It...it could help, in a way.”  She set her jaw. “I can afford it.”

“She isn’t _paying_ you?”

“I’m building them myself,” she snapped.  “Don’t have to pay my crew.”

“Yuwa-san was telling us about her...manners,” Iruka tried, and Kagiya snorted.

“She’s got court manners.”  Kagiya rubbed her close-cropped grey hair.  “She tells you what she wants, and by the end of the talk you’ve got nothing, and you’ve agreed to lend her your eyeteeth.”  

“I’m beginning to hope we never meet her,” Kakashi called over.  “I’ve never seen a Kagiya assemble fireworks. It’s hard to remember they aren’t all ninja techniques.”

“I’m working on adding colors,” her mouth quirked.  Fully turned to face them, they could see her tattoo and love of colors extended up her neck, cheek, and into her hair--an odd assortment of willows, chrysanthemums, peonies, and spiders intertwined, and Iruka realized they were types of firework.

“Colors,” Kakashi looked up from his inspection of fuses.  “We know your artisans are some of the few allowed knowledge of hidden techniques--”

Her mouth quirked further.  “With _chemistry_.  These will light up both yellow,” she paused, glancing between their faces, “...and _blue_.”  

“Blue,” Iruka blinked, wide-eyed.  

“How--but--” Kakashi trotted over to hover a safe distance from her elbow, and Iruka bit his lips to hide his smile, surveying the pad he’d brought for notes.  

“Did you test some for her?  We saw an explosion last night, from the inn.”

Kagiya snorted.  “She chose herself some ‘gifts’ out of the storeroom.”

“...and just had her own show, at moonset?”

“She also picked out three bottles of my sake,” Kagiya’s eyes narrowed.  While Iruka grilled her on her life and work, Kakashi wandered a bit, before coming over to crouch next to him.  Kakashi’s abrupt head turn alerted Iruka before the bang of the door opening to admit the man Iruka had seen the night before, with the dragon tattoo up his neck. He threw it open, the hooded child leaning around him.  “Kagiya-kachou,” he glared at the intruders.

“What,” she shouted back, staggering before smacking her left knee with the mallet as she stepped back from the table.  It clanked, but straightened.

The interloper started when he saw them, frowning between their faces and Kagiya.  

“There’s a meal ready.”

“Almost done,” she called back, and he huffed, slamming the door again.

“This has been fascinating,” Iruka sighed, closing his notebook, and swallowing down his urge to suggest a field trip with his class.  “This Koukyuu...she _stole_ from you?  If she’s a government official, isn’t there anything you can do?”

Kagiya’s laugh was sharp.  “I could ask her to report herself.”

“Ugh.  Were those that we saw all she took, at least?”

She sighed, finishing out the row of bamboo tubes, and tucking the mallet into a loop on her apron.  “I...this is terrible, but I’m not sure. We’ve had...a few things go missing, recently. Once it was just a batch of flash bombs that got wet, but…”

“Other _explosives_ are missing?”

“Not--” she frowned.  “It’s odd stuff. I haven’t wanted to bother Sute-jo--she has enough on her plate--” she growled softly, deep in her throat.  “What with...everything. Sometimes, though, I’ll seal away something for safety--if it’s on fire, or unstable, or I just want it out of the way.  In a scroll, you know. My apprentices practice as well--it’s useful, it’s prevented some real disasters.”

“The scrolls are going missing?” Iruka blinked at her, trying to bend his tone away from triumph, and toward surprise.  

“I can’t think what anyone would _want_ with them,” she untied a handkerchief from around her arm, and wiped the sweat off her face.  “They’re useless. You couldn’t learn the technique from a scroll, and you’d be under a pile of burning rubble besides.”

“Someone could be trying,” Kakashi shrugged.  “Who has access? Where do you keep them?”

“Wellllll,” she frowned, drawing out the word as she glanced between them.  “Everyone who works here, obviously. My family. It’s possible someone tried to dispose of them, though I’ve said I’d rather do it myself.”

The door slid open again to allow the child to stand in the doorway, hands on hips.  “ _Auntie_.”

“...almost done,” she said distractedly, glancing from Iruka and Kakashi to her crate of tubes.  “Just a few left.”

“I can show them out,” the small sniffly voice said.  “Since they’re _distracting_ you from finishing that woman _thief’s_ project.”

“Ah,” Kagiya winced, rolling her shoulders.  

“We are, aren’t we,” Iruka smiled between them.  “We’ll be on our way! Thank you, we’re so grateful for your time.”  

“We are on a mission, though, so if you could avoid mentioning I’m in the Bingo Book--” Kakashi waggled his most persuasive eyebrow.

She nodded, turning back to her task with a sigh as Iruka ushered Kakashi out and homed in on the kid.  Once the door was shut, he glanced down. “So...you saw the tax official too?”

Her nose wrinkled.  “She’s _horrible_ ,” Kakashi jerked his head back from her tiny flailing arms.  “She’s _always_ horrible!  Every year she’s horrible!  She always knows exactly how much money we make, and what we _will_ make, and she wants that _too--_ ” she made a choking, gulping noise, and Iruka crouched, offering his handkerchief.  There were two extremely muscular tattooed women watching them from under the eaves of the next building, and Kakashi nodded over.  “We don’t even _make_ much money--there are always injuries--and repairs--but she can just take what she wants, and nobody can _stop_ her--” Iruka’s eyes narrowed, remembering the descriptions of their awful-ninja-tool dealer, but also considering the little face in the hood, gleaming with painted flowers and eyelash wings in artful imitation of the tattoos every adult was sporting.  Smudged though she currently was, it wasn’t hard to imagine how many of the buyers in his class were likely to have been swayed by a pretty face.

“Everyone’s told us how awful she is, I’m so sorry,” he nodded almost imperceptibly when Kakashi squeezed his shoulder, jerking his head at their audience.  “Do you sell fireworks here?  Maybe we could buy some. I’m Iruka, and that’s Kakashi, by the way--”

“You’re tourists, you should pay double,” the child said without skipping a beat, and he suppressed a grin.  “Mikan. I’m apprenticed to my aunt, great-granddaughter of the woman who invented fish stars.” As they blinked at each other, she sighed loudly, grabbed their sleeves, and hauled them to another building--a storeroom, piled high with differently packed and labeled tubes.  “They _swim into the sky_ , I should sell you _dirt_ , you wouldn’t know the diff--” she slammed the door open, tromping in to pat reassuringly at one of the crates.  “We keep the stores small, in case of fire.”

“Wow.  How much are they?”  

She eyed him up, blowing her nose again.  “How much have you got?”

Kakashi was having difficulty restraining his laughter.  Iruka raised his eyebrows. “I want to help, but we do have other plans for our money.”

“That _woman_ gave my aunt a _weeks_ worth of work and _no money_ ,” her fists started to shake--with fury, he expected.  “I had to pay my _own tuition_ by _myself_.”

“Did you?” Iruka cocked his head.  “You should probably talk to your aunt, though, about that.”

“Does a woman work here that rides a cat?” Kakashi hrrrrmed over a crate of fireworks, and Mikan nearly stumbled off the stool she was standing on.  “She wears all green, and has the kanji for--”

“You leave Midori alone!” Mikan brandished a firework tube at him like a short, boobytrapped bamboo practise weapon.  

“My,” he blinked at her.  “Weren’t you going to sell these to us?”

“Midori’s my best friend.  You just don’t know her,” Mikan glared between them.  “Why do you want to know, anyway?”

“She was vending goods in town,” Iruka blinked at her, guileless.  

“No!  Again?!  I told--what was she _selling_ , we don’t even--” she blinked between them.  “...what was she selling? She’d never take from a storeroom…”

“What was she selling before?” Kakashi cocked his head.  “Oh, I definitely need some ‘fish stars’.”

“... _nothing_ ,” Mikan’s eyes narrowed.  “My aunt _perfected_ fish stars, they’re bigger, they swim faster, they’re dragons now, they light up the whole sky, they’re over there,” she pointed, face still scrunched with suspicion.  “What did you see Midori doing?  Is she in trouble?”

“Midori-san does what you tell her?” Iruka accepted the tubes labelled Dragon Star.  “Isn’t she older than you?”

“She doesn’t care about that.  If someone has a good idea, she’ll listen.  And nobody listens to Midori but me, because she doesn’t...she’s--she can be hard to understand.”

“So things Midori does...are often your fault, huh?” Iruka climbed up to investigate a massive crate.

“Yes!” she put her hands on her hips.  “Everything Midori does is _my_ fault!”

“Oh, really?  She’s a lot bigger than you.”

“If it’s bad I told her to do it!” she yelled back, elbows straight out from her shoulders, forearms dangling, like she was trying to look large.

“Maybe you shouldn’t have Midori do things that might get her in trouble, then,” Kakashi hopped down.  “We came to ask your aunt about her, but--”

“Don’t do that!” she grabbed his sleeve with both hands.  “No--don’t--ask my aunt! I won’t ask Midori to do anything that would get her in trouble!”

“She was selling bombs and scrolls,” Iruka raised his eyebrows.  “Do you know anything about that?”

She swallowed.  “To- _today?!_ ”

“They were _dangerous_ ,” he emphasized.  “To the buyers, and to Midori, isn’t she your friend?  You won’t have her sell that kind of thing again?”

“I--no, I’d never--”

“Then I’ll take these!” Kakashi grinned at her, and she gritted her teeth, stomping over to collect paper and begin sums.  

“I--I’ll give you a deal, since you’re leaving Midori out of it,” she glared up.  “Only 75% more than usual.”

“Will that keep you from having to sell more dangerous scrolls and _explosives_ to _other children_ to pay for school?” Iruka crouched down to sit face-to-face with her, and she squeaked, breaking her pencil.  

“...I will find another way,” she growled back.

“A safer way?”

“A _safer_ way,” she snarled.  “ _This_ is your total, _tourist_ -san.”

Kakashi’s shoulders were shaking as he snickered, but Iruka nodded, paying up in complete satisfaction.  On their way back to the village, he walked sideways to thud against Kakashi, wrapping an arm around him and pulling him into a kiss.  The inside of Kakashi’s mouth was _warm_ , and Iruka let his eyes flutter closed with an appreciative groan.  

“Iruka,” Kakashi pulled back, his laugh warm against their scarves, but Iruka reeled him back in.  After another too-brief minute, “ _Iruka_.  There are hot springs.  We can take our--”

“That’s stupid,” Iruka whispered back, tugging at the striped scarf.  “You’re _right here_.”  He kissed at the heat rapidly rising across Kakashi’s cheeks.

“But if you push me up against this tree, snow will go--”

“Well, yes,” Iruka let himself be batted away, grinning as Kakashi shook off the snow already in his scarf.  “Here--” he leaned to brush around Kakashi’s back. “You would have looked so atmospheric, a snow-covered scarecrow--”

“You were distracting me,” Kakashi eyed him warily.  “Lowering my guard with your wiles while you pushed me into this _snow trap_ \--and your nose is actually _colder_ than the snow, if you were wondering--”

“Believe me, I’m aware--”

“I barely got you out into the snow at all, I thought I was going to have to drag you on a sledge--”

“The hunting instincts of a jounin were indeed better than my lowly genin--”

“Oh, yes, it was definitely my _ninja training_ that drew us here.  Tell me you got some of the blue ones.” he ducked away from Iruka’s mitten-load of snow, rummaging around in the sack.

“We should get them back and seal them before they’re ruined in all this slush...but yes,” Iruka grinned, nodding.  “ _Blue dragon stars_ , whatever that means.  Both of our missions are complete.”

“--and yet she charged you nearly twice their cost,” Kakashi raised his eyebrows.

Iruka shrugged.  “They weren’t all that expensive.  And now we can go back to the inn, and spend the next two days naked, bathing in hot water and sake.”

“We should have gotten some bamboo straws to breathe through,” Kakashi nodded wisely, cheeks flushed.  

 

Yuwa looked even more stressed than she had that morning, pristinely made up  and unwrinkled, but smiling vaguely at them for a few seconds before clapping her hand to her mouth.  “Oh! Hello again! You’re...back. I don’t suppose...you saw any sign of Koukyuu-san? On your way?”

“She’s still missing?” Kakashi frowned, glancing at Iruka.  

“She hasn’t been seen since last night,” she bowed to some passing guests.  “But I am sure your bathe will be lovely after that walk in the snow!”

“...yes,” Iruka nodded, allowing Kakashi to prod him towards their room before she decided they needed more attention, but she bustled after them.

“I was supposed to mention this morning,” she bobbed her head with a resigned smile, “Fukurou-san and Mameryou-san, that you met yesterday evening?”  At her pause, Iruka nodded. “They wrote a new show for Koukyuu-san. I’ve heard wonderful things, if you’d like to see it.”

“A show, you say,” Kakashi leaned his head between them.  “What sort of show?”

“Oh, it’s a comedy, of course.  It’s about a person who is in love with a beautiful young woman who believes she is a dragon, and seeks another dragon to marry.” Yuwa clasped her hands.  “It’s not _really_ a romance, or--there are so many things Koukyuu-san dislikes, you know, but the music is lovely, Mameryou has been singing it for months, and their costumes are always divine.  The dragon puppet is made from their old kimono.”

“Perhaps we will go,” Iruka sighed, smiling, as Kakashi peered hopefully up at him, one arm around Yuwa.  She giggled. “Once I’ve thawed.”

“Oh dear,” she pushed Kakashi towards him.  “Yes! Are you hungry?”

“Hot sake,” Iruka nodded, stomping his feet to knock the snow off before he stepped up to the floor and the seductive light of the fire.  

“Also food,” Kakashi nodded, his visible eye smiling.  “Thank you, Yuwa-san.”

“Of course,” she beamed at both of them.  “It’ll be the work of a moment.”

“I want about eleven bowls of ramen,” Iruka muttered, shivering through the chilly hallway around the rooms.

“Yuwa-san probably would have tried her best,” Kakashi grimaced.  

“...and I’m sure it’d be delicious,” Iruka’s enthusiasm was unconvincing.  “Artful ‘mountain vegetable’ ramen. Sounds...chewy. The food here is good, but if you find in your travels a fancy hotspring with a ramen cart that will hand you bowls while you soak--”

“That sounds like a disaster.  Noodles in the bath.”

“As if I’d let the one ruin the other,” Iruka scoffed, slamming their door and peeling out of his layers.  “ _Strip_.”

“I have to get in _gradually_ \--” Kakashi laughed, finding himself drug towards the balcony overhanging the steaming spring.  “I’ll combust, Iruka--”

“Just be _closer_ ,” Iruka dropped to sit at the edge of the spring, the waters lapping at his waist, and yanked at Kakashi’s clothes.  “Out.”

Instead of obeying, Kakashi pulled off his scarf, leaning in to bite gently at Iruka’s frozen nose, and kissing across his eyelashes.  “Yuwa-san will bring food soon.” He groaned as Iruka pulled him down with hands steaming from the spring water. “You’re so warm.”

“Mmm,” Iruka grinned against his mouth.  “‘Mystery time’ is over. It’s time for the true purpose of this voyage, and my greatest love:  Baths.”

“There’s a steam room somewhere,” Kakashi remembered, at peace with second place in Iruka’s affections.

“Maybe if they run low on water,” Iruka sighed, sliding forward to drop another step into the bath.  

Kakashi scrambled for purchase, laughing.  “Let go, you’ll drown me.”

“The spirit of the baths would be merciful towards his greatest worshipper,” Iruka sighed, letting his eyes slide closed.  “Hurry up.”

Kakashi let go of his handhold on the wall, and found kissing Iruka’s widening smile irresistible.  “Augh,” he pulled away, lengthening the pauses between kisses. “Your nose is still like a _snowball_.”

“Mmm,” Iruka hummed.  “I know. Come on, it’ll--”  Much too quickly, a knock came at the door, and Kakashi squeezed his shoulder.  

“I’ve got it.”  

“I can be responsible sometime,” Iruka called after him, laughing, as Kakashi reapplied his scarf layers.  

“No,” he stage-whispered, leaning back around the corner, “No one’s watching!”

“I suppose if it’s just you,” Iruka shouted after him, with a splashing noise.  

Kakashi padded out shortly with a tray, and handed out one of the square wooden sake cups bathhouses used to prevent alcohol sinking into the bath and breaking against the bottom.  “I’ll join you…” he trailed off, tucking a frosted tendril of hair behind Iruka’s ear, and letting his eyes linger over Iruka’s tan, muscled shoulders, loose wet hair, and the delicate layer of frost forming on his hair and eyebrows from the steam hitting the winter air.

“Thank you for...spoiling me,” Iruka grinned up, cheeks flushed.  “Of course I can get things myself--”

“My pleasure,” Kakashi dropped to lie on his stomach at the edge of the balcony, twining his fingers in Iruka’s hair to pull him closer and kiss away the flavour of the sake.  “Ask me for anything. Midnight ramen. The Mizukage’s hat.”

Iruka snorted, pulling Kakashi’s scarf off and tossing it in order to kiss his whole face systematically.  “I definitely--” he kissed along Kakashi’s eyes and eyebrows, “--need--” he kissed thoroughly kissed both cheeks, biting gently at his ears and breathing warm words against the cold damp skin, “--that latter.”  He stepped in closer, planting his feet to stand pressed against the edge of the wood decking, and run steaming hands up Kakashi’s neck and through his hair.

Kakashi went boneless, closing his eyes with a smile Iruka kissed softly.  

“Thank you,” Iruka whispered against his lips, and Kakashi laughed.

“For ramen?”

“For taking care of me,” he held Kakashi’s head as he tried to duck away.  “For teaching my students to take care of each other.”

Kakashi laughed, shaking his head, his cheeks heating against Iruka’s lips.

“Naruto and the Third told me about that test,” Iruka kissed along Kakashi’s hairline, appreciating the contrast between his white hair and red face. “--with the lunchboxes, and why, and I...thought about you, after that.”

“At night, right?” Kakashi’s skin was hot even against Iruka’s half boiled bath hands.  “All night long you--”

“ _That’s_ an unrelated issue--”

Kakashi’s head jerked up, wide-eyed.  “Please tell me my page of the Bingo Book was pinned up on your wall--”

“Right next to the Third Hokage,” Iruka wrinkled his nose.  

“Wait, but _young_ Hokage, or--”

Iruka pressed a thumb against Kakashi’s lips.  “Do you want to hear this?”

Kakashi lowered his eyes, laughing softly.  “Not sure it’s going anywhere good.”

Iruka raised his eyebrows.  “I don’t want somebody that holds my hand every time I walk outside in case I stub my toe, but the…” his lips thinned as he thought, running his thumb along Kakashi’s jaw.  “You make sure I know I’m...valued. Konohagure can be lonely. Thank you, for...valuing people so much.” Kakashi’s laugh was a little shaky against Iruka’s lips.

 

As they wandered out for dinner that night, Yuwa was juggling two bags, a pretty silk shawl, and sandals that were nearly a foot tall, putting her nearly at Iruka’s shoulder.  “Are you going to the play?” he asked guiltily, in his comfy indoor socks, steadying her elbow as she staggered.

“Oh,” she nearly fell again, the other direction.  “I’m so sorry, I’m fine once I get moving! And not...exactly,” she lowered her eyes, neck reddening under her unusually heavy makeup.  “We...opened some rather fine sake, for Koukyuu-san, you know, and it...it seems a waste not to drink it, so I thought perhaps…” Kakashi waited, raising his eyebrows at Iruka.  “A-Aoi-san,” she swallowed. “I thought, I would--we could--”

“Yes,” Iruka agreed, firmly, pushing her at the door.  “Do.”

 

That night the people Kakashi had not valued enough came into his dreams, and he jerked awake in the darkness, wet with sweat, to the sound of small footsteps padding in a circle around their futon.  He burst into the hallway following the soft creaks and thumps to see the long empty passage bathed in flickering light, and...nothing. Sheathing his kunai, he sat down in the doorway, and wondered if he’d dreamed of Obito or Rin as a child, and he listened to Iruka breathe--Iruka was snoring softly, probably already balled up in the center of the warmth.  Kakashi let his head thunk back against the edge of the door, taking a few slow, measured breaths. He considered walking back in and waking Iruka, curling against his warmth, and submitting to a sleepily nonsensical but thorough assessment of his wellbeing.

The mat in front of his folded legs creaked, and he shot to his feet, in light suddenly bright enough to cast shadows into the room behind.  The footsteps returned, and he lowered the hand he’d covered his sharingan with to see only a brightly lit hallway. His sleeve yanked his arm down, and something small and wooden shoved its way between his fingers.  He squeezed it, feeling his back hit the wall again, and it felt like a painted spinning top--a toy. He spared a glance down, and it was, and he smiled. _Oh.  I’m still dreaming, then.  Is it my friends as children,_ he wondered, _or the children I prevented them having?_

When the footsteps pattered away again, he followed.  They led to a door, and through, the light leaving him in another chilly hallway lit only by the moon through the paper screens.  There were rustling noises coming from inside, and he considered for a long moment, clenching the top in his hand, before pushing his hand against the door to thump it a few times against the frame.

“Come!” called a hoarse voice from inside, and he slid the door open on a surprisingly unfamiliar face.  There was a woman in a pine-painted silk kimono kneeling in the center of piles of clothes, crates, and overturned sacks.  “I can’t find it,” she said levelly, then looked up, taking a shaky breath and wiping her face. “...you’re--a guest. I’m sorry, I expected Yuwa-san.  I am--Sute--” she tried to stand, discovered her legs were asleep, and fell somewhat gracelessly against a box.

“...would you like me to find her?” he assessed her swollen eyes and composed expression.  

“She’s busy, I’m sure,” she smiled up, clenching her jaw.  

“I think you met my...Iruka,” he crouched, rolling the top in his hand.  “You’re staying here? I thought you lived here in Shukuba?”

She closed her eyes, clearing her throat mid-sentence.  “This is Ko--Koukyuu-san’s room. I was…” she clenched her fists, taking a long, deep breath.  “She was to bring medicine. We--we aren’t--no one has died, but she said there were discoveries in the capital, that she had wonderful _new medicine_ \--one for people already fighting it, and one--” she laughed sharply, “--one that prevents it altogether.  She was to bring a great deal of it, and the recipe to make more.” She shook her head. “It is...nowhere. I don’t know how it is...packaged, but there is _nothing_ here, no notes--”

Kakashi spun the top in his palm, considering.  “This medicine. It’s for a...plague?”

She laughed again, scooting over to halfheartedly pat down a pair of sandals much too low for the weather.  “It’s called the three-day collapse. You begin making rice-water--” she gestured behind her, “And then you die.”

“I am from a hidden village,” he frowned at the top, and her head snapped up.  “I may be able to help.”

“Please,” she said through her hand, eyes welling, and he bit his finger again, summoning his sniffer dogs.  

“Check for anything in here that smells medicinal,” he told them.  “Any paper that’s been used to wrap medicine, any herbs or chemicals--”

They trotted around curiously, eventually bringing a bottle of sake strong enough to use in bomb-making, and a packet labeled headache powder.  She tasted it, and closed her eyes again. “...the character for my name is ‘foundling’, did you know?”

He shook his head.

“The first time our village was struck, my mother was a child.  She nearly died--all her family died. After she married, it returned for her--her husband--his mother--my older siblings.  My mother was pregnant,” she smiled up. “When she began to collapse, Tsubaki-dono came to her, and told her our family had angered the spirits.  They had sent this, but could be tricked. If they took me outside of the village, and she pretended to find me, they would never know I had escaped, and Tsubaki-dono would see I came to no harm.  It’s a traditional--some spirits are--they don’t think as we do.”

Kakashi listened, his fingers beginning to hurt where they clenched the top.

“My mother died too soon.  Tsubaki-dono found me, in--in the house,” she smiled at the headache powder.  “She took me, and pretended I was a stranger’s child, out in the forest. I was already sick, and Tsubaki-dono is not...used to children--” she laughed.  “Of course. But I lived. This will be the fourth time it’s come for me.” She tasted the headache powder again, swallowing. “I think it’s really headache powder.  Everyone is going to die.”

The room was brighter than the lamp could account for, and Kakashi squeezed the top in his hand.  “Don’t give up yet. Get some sleep, and--in the morning, we’ll see what can be done.”

She took a steadying breath, and nodded.  “An-anything would be appreciated.” The light faded, and she glanced around, then laughed softly.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is probably going to need another battle or two in the war I'm fighting over formatting with Google Drive, sorry about that. The foundling custom is based on tradition, and the number four is considered very unlucky--which I couldn't really imagine either of them mentioning. Kagiya is _still_ a respected firework maker, though their apprentice did indeed cause a fire, forcing cities to move their workshops outside town. All fireworks were orange until the 1830's, when some artisans in Italy started experimenting with different mineral additives. Also, this bathhouse exists, within a ninja's run of the city Kishimoto based Konohagure on. 
> 
>  
> 
> Outtake: 
> 
> “Anyway,” Iruka pressed a thumb against Kakashi’s lips. “Shut up for a minute, or the next time you ask, I’ll be exaggeratedly sincere in front of an audience. Maybe I could get Yuwa-san and Gai in the same room.”  
> Kakashi shuddered, wide-eyed. 
> 
> I keep forgetting to put this, but concrit welcome!


	6. Put that thing back where it came from, or so help me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Despite it being their honeymoon, Kakashi and Iruka deign to investigate, when they can stop teasing each other for five minutes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Less than show-typical violence, but specifics in the end note.

Kakashi dropped at Iruka’s side on the futon, leaning on his elbow to kiss the cold, glossy black hair poking out of the covers.  Iruka wriggled in, smacking a hand around above his head to yank Kakashi closer--by the _ear_ , unfortunately.  He woke further to Kakashi’s snickers, and realized Kakashi was mostly on top of the covers.  “...s’cold,” he mumbled, tugging at Kakashi’s hat.

“Did you drink _all_ that sake?” Kakashi whispered, kissing his ear.  “I’m sorry I fell asleep.”

“ _Sake_ kept me _company_ ,” Iruka sniffed, smacking Kakashi’s shoulder.  “Shoulda gone to the play. _No sex_.  Just _sake_.”

“I have a lot to answer for,” Kakashi nodded, letting himself be tugged in for hot, wet, sake-flavoured kisses.  “Your revenge will be swift and sure.”

“No,” Iruka tugged Kakashi’s hat down over his ears.  “I love you _so much even though_ you cried too much last night to get good sleep--”

“I wasn’t _crying,”_ Kakashi snorted, muffled by Iruka’s fingers flailing around trying to shut him up.  “I couldn’t sleep, you saw me--”

“--and even when we disappoint Yuwa-san by ignoring her _play_ invitation and staying in for _loads of sex_ but you just--”

Kakashi ducked away from his hands, laughing, and parted the neck of his nenneko, kissing along his throat.

“--I love you when you fall dead asleep on my foot and snore like a big--really big--animal with lots of--” his hand waved.  “--tails--love you,” his eyes narrowed until Kakashi lifted his head and nodded solemnly. Iruka sat up on his elbow, pulling Kakashi’s head close, then distractedly looked from his mouth to his eyes and kissed around his face in a circle.  “Told you so many things,” he whispered, “You snored.”

“Sorry,” Kakashi whispered back, following the kisses to press Iruka back into the covers.  He ran his thumb over the place where Iruka’s genjutsu-hidden scar usually showed, then kissed the familiar freckles.

“Wasn’t muttering,” Iruka pushed him away, patting his cheeks.  “Snoring. I don’t hear names.”

“...I was snoring...names?” Kakashi raised his eyebrows, remembering the vague terror before he’d awakened in a cold sweat to the sound of insubstantial footsteps.

“ _Just_ snoring,” Iruka frowned up, worried and drunk.

“Ah.  I had some...dreams, but I’m fine.  I think I met a ghost.”

“Tsuru-hime,” Iruka nodded, stroking Kakashi’s shoulder.

“...crane princess?” Kakashi ran his fingers through Iruka’s hair, tucking it behind his rapidly chilling ear.

“After the bathhouse cranes.  She died here. A...sickness.”

“I ran into Sute.  She said it’s here again-- _a_ sickness, anyway.  She said no one had died _yet,_ but Koukyuu was supposed to bring medicine, and whatever she brought vanished with her.”

“No,” Iruka shook his head.   _“Long_ time ago,” he flung an illustrative arm out, then leaned up to place a soft kiss on Kakashi’s lips, and whisper. “Everybody died but she stayed.  She’s a lamp now.”

“A...yes.”

“They can visit her.  We can’t visit _our_ dead.”

Kakashi’s throat closed, and he cleared it, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“We can visit them, but they don’t light up,” Iruka corrected.  

“Yeah,” Kakashi agreed, voice rough.  He let his head drop against Iruka’s chest.  

“Sorry I am soooooo drunk,” Iruka told him, hugging his head.  “Soooo drunk. Why did she bring soooo much sake.” He stroked Kakashi’s hair.  “Sake Kakashi. Kakashi Hasake. Kashi. Kashihata--”

Kakashi snickered into his chest.  “...I could probably get drunk kissing you, right now,” he whispered back, shivering as he assessed the empty sake bottles he remembered ordering before he’d apparently dozed off.

“Kashi~take,” Iruka continued thoughtfully.  “Shitake. Shitake _mushroom_.  I love you, my mushroom, my own.  You’re so...cold.”

“It’s fine,” Kakashi burrowed his face in to warm cotton, and the smells of soap, sake, and Iruka’s skin.

“Doubles will get you in bed,” Iruka muttered against Kakashi’s fine hair, and Kakashi abruptly realized the weird poky scrabbling at his head was Iruka trying to form seals.

“No, no, no,” he grabbed Iruka’s hands, kissing them.  “No drunk ninjutsu.”

“No drunk ninjutsu,” Iruka repeated, pulling his hands away to clasp them over Kakashi’s ears.  They were only slightly warmer than the air, and Kakashi shivered again, harder.

“ _Kakashi_ ,” Iruka hissed, shoving him off their shared futon.  Once Kakashi wasn’t lying on it, the whole side lifted between Iruka’s arm and foot like the yawning maw of an enormous clam so that Iruka could smack his hand out to yank Kakashi inside.  Kakashi grinned, ducking under Iruka’s flailing arm and crawling closer on his elbows. Iruka wrapped both arms around his neck and pulled him close, pressing wet kisses over his face.

 

The next time Iruka awakened, his face was pressed to the warm cotton of Kakashi’s back, and he kissed it, contemplating the weight behind his eyes, pressing on his brain.  It was so quiet he could hear the water rushing over the hand-high waterfall into their spring, but the light was bright and morning-bluish through the screens. Leaning up to rest his chin on Kakashi’s pile of blankets, he tried to gauge the dark circles under Kakashi’s eyes.  Not as bad as he’d seen, obviously, but as he considered them and the hours of morning available to sleep in, he realized Kakashi’s ears were turning red. “Hrm,” he inchwormed up the blankets, pausing to groan as the motion rocked his internal organs, and kissed behind Kakashi’s ear.  “I must have gotten lost in thought. My brain is full of gravel this morning, for some reason.”

“It happens,” Kakashi sighed, rolling over to rub his face against Iruka’s chest and squirming deeper into the soft covers.  “It’s distracting for me too, knowing all the beauty contests I’ve won.”

“Sleeping beauty god/Hair squashed to his head, breath rank/Lacks humility,” Iruka intoned, and Kakashi snorted.

“International poet sensation,” he muttered into Iruka’s chest, then lifted his head.  “What _will_ you do with all the money you make on this poetry tour?”

“Worship you, obviously.”

“You’re not as funny as you think you are,” Kakashi sniffed the air, and grimaced.

“I would never joke about your beauty,” Iruka kissed his ear, then his forehead, watching him turn redder.  “It gets us a discount on ramen.”

“...sorry I fell asleep last night and left you all alone with way too much sake,” Kakashi let his head tip back, closing his eyes as he appreciated Iruka’s warm mouth against his jaw.  “I talked to Sute, do you remember me telling you?”

“Noooo,” Iruka cocked his head, biting gently at Kakashi’s stubble.

“I thought I was dreaming, and I found her crying, searching Koukyuu’s room--” at Iruka’s raised eyebrows, he huffed a laugh.  “I sleep better on missions, running around.”

“Oh,” Iruka paused, wrinkling his nose thoughtfully.  “...something about...medicine?”

“Koukyuu was bringing it,” Kakashi nodded.  “It’s missing too. Don’t kiss me until you rinse your mouth out.”

“It’s penance,” Iruka gave his ear a slow, gentle bite.  “I have to taste it, so do you. If they don’t find it, we could get the hokage.”

“I told Sute we’d help, but the dogs couldn’t find anything in her room.”

“Have they looked for Koukyuu herself?”

Kakashi shook his head.  “It’s been snowing for days.  They’d have to be within feet of her to smell anything, assuming she’s not frozen solid.”

Iruka nodded, combing his hands through Kakashi’s fluffier, warmer-feeling hair.  “We’ll figure it out.”

“The little ghost girl led me to her,” Kakashi whispered against his shoulder, sighing.

“...maybe she has more to say.”  Iruka kissed his head.

They laid there until the sunlight through the screens got a little warmer, and a knock came at the door, bringing with it a stranger in understated white-speckled indigo bearing trays of  breakfast.

“The guard,” Iruka asked her.  “Night before last, when we awoke to fireworks.  Do you know where I could find her?”

“Oh,” she blinked.  “Tsubaki-dono will...would you like me to send a message?”

“That would be helpful,” Kakashi crinkled an eye-smile at her, waving with the tips of his fingers from the bed.  

She smoothed her hair, tucking a loose end into her bun.  It promptly swung down again to rest against her ear. “Yes!  Certainly. Ah.”

“How’s Yuwa-san this morning?” he grinned.

“Ah?” She blinked again, blushing.  “Oh! I…” she frowned, considering the wall as she stirred up the flames in the irori.  “I have not seen her. Would you like me to find her as well?”

“No, no,” Iruka sat dangerously close to the small fire, sighing at the warmth in his toes, and thanked her as she pulled her gaze off Kakashi’s exposed shoulders and left.  Iruka sipped at the broth, grimacing as he nudged the grilled fish towards Kakashi, who was very slowly edging out from under the covers.

“You’re sore from yesterday?”  Iruka blinked innocently over, and Kakashi raised an eyebrow.  “How _odd_ , since you fell asleep just as I was getting romantic--I would think a ninja of your caliber would get more exercise, but if you need me to show you some stretches…”

Kakashi snorted.  

“Maybe you need to have some more _instruction--_ wait,” he sat up abruptly.  “How old were you--they pulled you out of the academy at age _five_ , did you ever _get_ sex ed?”

“Ah,” Kakashi’s face pinked as he grimaced down at his hands.  “Well…?”

“Oh no,” Iruka snickered, wide-eyed.  “Do I need to--”

“I found the Icha-Icha books,” Kakashi stared back.  “They’re not...exactly…”

“Oh _no,”_ Iruka breathed.  “What happened?”

“Nothing _happened,”_ Kakashi protested.  “There’s this...scene, a woman kneeling before a man, he’s standing, his cock’s in her mouth, right--”

“...yes?”

“And then he starts _fingering_ her, and I was rereading the passage going “Is he...is he bent over her back?  How is her head still getting in there, with him bent so far at the waist? Why don’t they lie down?”

Iruka fell back against his pillow, laughing silently as he clutched at his head.  

“And then he starts playing with her chest somehow, but he’d have to reach under and around--”

“Oh no,” Iruka cackled.  

“I mean, I’m sure Jiraiya-sensei just got distracted and forgot--”

“What did you _do.”_  Iruka rolled onto his side, eyebrows raised.

“I didn’t!”  

“You are much too red for me to believe that--”

 _“I_ did nothing, _Gai_ caught me reading it--”

“Yes!”  Iruka wheezed.  “How have I not heard this story--”

“Because I was taught a _rigorous_ sex ed by _Mighty Gai_ \--he chased me around, shouting and hitting me with rolled-up diagrams-- _”_

“Naruto complains about _my_ sex ed class--” Iruka wiped his eyes.  “He has no idea how much he has to be grateful for-- _”_  He grinned over at Kakashi’s scowl and lost himself to giggles again.  “I should tell Tsunade-sama--hey, all these elite ninja that got hauled out of the academy as toddlers, they haven’t gotten the Talk.  They’re probably pulling condoms over their heads and suffocating, and it’s getting reported as enemy strikes--”

“That happens frequently,” Kakashi confirmed, solemn, and Iruka barked a laugh, crawling over to slump against him, hugging his waist.

“I’m sure Gai would help me do a class.”

“He would,” Kakashi said dourly, mouth twitching as he ran his fingers through Iruka’s hair.  “He’s probably still got the diagrams.”

“Something to commiserate with Team Gai over.  Until you’ve fielded entire classrooms asking how to use ninjutsu for sex, though, you’ll get no sympathy from me.  They’re _inventive.”_

“That’s horrifying,” Kakashi’s eyes widened.  

“You cannot believe the questions I’ve been asked,” Iruka shuddered.  “Mostly ‘Would it work if--’ and all I can do is try not to snort, or let my eye twitch, and then I have to calmly say ‘I don’t see why it wouldn’t, but make sure you talk about it with your partner first’,” he groaned into Kakashi’s thigh.  “Or, occasionally, ‘Maybe that should stay...out of the bedroom?’ in the case of, oh, Chouji?”

“We should talk about something else,” Kakashi was staring into the distance with the eyes of one witnessing horrors.  “While I can still look your students in the face and not feel like the dirtiest of old men.”

 

They passed Tsuru-hime's room as they left, but the gentle glow of the little girl's soul was not to be seen. Kakashi bowed deeply anyway.  "I'll talk to her later," he shrugged, and Iruka nodded, listening for little footsteps.  When they braved the reception area, the woman who had brought their breakfast nodded to them, waving at someone sprawled by the large central irori.  Iruka reflected, padding over, that he’d assumed the guard’s slight disarray was due to her frantic dash with good news, but she was now wearing even less uniform--only a wrap around her chest, loose pants, and boots--and smelled nearly as strongly of liquor as Iruka had around midnight.  “What,” she rolled onto her back to frown up at them.

“I was wondering about the last time you talked to Koukyuu-san,” he crouched down, realizing the patterns, subtle on her dark skin, were very like the indigo designs the town produced.  

“Nice ink,” Kakashi offered, and she saluted him, grinning.

Iruka introduced them, but pressed on.  “Did she say where she was headed? Koukyuu?”

 _“Why_ would you look for somebody like her,” the guard sighed, eyes wide at the ceiling, then rolled her head to frown at him.  “Back to town, I thought. I know she was looking forward to the ticket money from the theater, but she was drunk.” She shrugged.  “Maybe she froze.”

“She...takes the ticket money?” Kakashi raised his visible eyebrow.  “How much of it?”

“She taxes each business separately,” the guard shrugged.  “We aren’t supposed to ask how much.”

“That’s terribly convenient for her,” Kakashi cocked his head.

“She’s kinda got us pinned,” she shrugged, then yelled “Where’s Yuwa-san?”

“She’s been gone all morning,” their starry blue garbed breakfast-deliverer called back.

“Can my cat come in, then?” the guard rolled onto her elbow to grin winningly.

“Absolutely not.”

“Awww.”  She flopped back on her back, sighing up at them.  “She’ll be _cold_ outside.”

“We could go ask around at the theater,” Iruka suggested, and Kakashi hrrrrrmed.

“It occurs to me that the lovely Yuwa-san has read all the Icha-Icha books,” he confided, leaning to whisper in Iruka's ear.

“Has she really,” Iruka waited, mouth quirking.

“And people are going _missing_ in this town.”

“Well, a _person_ has,” the guard put in.  “It’s not like they’re all walking into the sea.”

"Still," Kakashi sighed dramatically.  "She's very small, Yuwa-san.  Someone might just roll her away."

“Would you like to go check on Yuwa-san _and_ _Aoi-san_ _?”_ Iruka asked, thumping Kakashi’s shoulder with his own.

“Just in case,” the smile-lines around Kakashi’s eyes deepened, and Iruka took his arm, leaning in to kiss his scarf.

 

They walked into an enormous white cat with black splotches, turning irritably in the snow under the eaves, ears flat against the dripping icicles.  Iruka’s face bounced off its side, smacking him back into Kakashi’s chest, and the cat yowled mournfully, striking them temporarily deaf. “Riding a cat,” Iruka blinked.  

“The cats are Tsubaki’s friends,” the guard leaned out, grinning.  “So they’re my friends. I bring fish, Tora!”

The cat headbutted her back through the doorway.  

After listening to the muffled shouting for a moment, Kakashi shrugged.  “The carnage sounds jovial.”

Iruka nodded, taking his arm again.

The walk through town to Aoi-san’s indigo workshop was much shorter than the snowy trek to Kagiya’s firework compound, though the snow kept blowing up under their umbrellas, and Kakashi kept ducking under the awnings of random stalls.  Iruka, laden with grilled mochi, wandered over to see what his cackling was about. He bent nearly in half to duck into the tiny shop, leaning to bump Kakashi’s shoulder.  “Oh, look,” he wrinkled his nose, holding a mochi skewer out for Kakashi to bite off, and then pointing it at one of the pinned-up prints.  “It’s Jiraiya-sensei, wrapped in more frog tongue than I wanted to see, and yet much too much of Jiraiya-sensei is still showing.”

Kakashi looked up from the pile of special editions he was stacking.  “Oh. Yes. Hrm. Did you want it?”

Iruka paused his chewing to cough, and Kakashi waited politely.  “No. No, I don’t--we could get it for Naruto.”

Kakashi snorted.  

“I’m definitely telling him how much I regret _not_ buying it for him, at length,” Iruka chomped thoughtfully at his mochi.  “I’d say we could bring it back for the Hokage, but I’m sure the sensei himself has sent her a copy.  Probably with hearts, and ‘Want to see more?’ written with a winky-face.”

“I’m going to keep looking at this Icha Icha art book, thank you for those mental images,” Kakashi shuddered, red-faced.  

After shopping around for a while longer while Kakashi stood entranced, Iruka waved to the merchant, pointing at the art book Kakashi was drooling over.  “I’d like that, these,” he waved to the armload Kakashi had assembled, “--and the set of kunoichi prints. Can you have someone deliver them to the bathhouse?”  He leaned his head back to thump gently at Kakashi’s. “Should I get Naruto this action figure of the Gutsy Shinobi?”

Kakashi looked suspicious.  “No, and why are you buying lady pinups?”

“Says the man buying Icha-Icha illustrations--”

“They are _art--”_

Iruka paid, setting his shoulders before they ducked back out into the drifting snowflakes.  “They aren’t pinups. They’re quite professional-looking. I’ll hang them in the classroom and assign reports. I believe Hokage-sama is in there--”  

Kakashi leaned in to kiss him.  

“Mmm,” Iruka grinned into the kisses.  “I’m glad you’re so enthused about education.  On second thought, we could always head back to our room--” he trailed off, watching the heavily built people leaning around the door of the mochi stall.  One of them was the gentleman covered in dragons he’d seen the night before, and at Kagiya’s. “Or not. I’m starting to feel a bit followed,” he flicked his gaze towards the man, and Kakashi’s followed.  

“He’s like a buoy, really,” Kakashi whispered.  “Bouncing along behind us.”

“Shush,” Iruka kept his eyes forward.  “You can’t see him when he has his back to us, what are you, some kind of ninja?”

“If he starts scuttling around in a box with eyeholes, I am going to lose it,” Kakashi bit his lips together.  

“I can _smell_ indigo--ah, there,” Iruka pointed to the intricately patterned blue and white banners ahead, overhung by elaborate eaves.  “Aoi-san’s. Behind that huge wall? It looks like somewhere a lord would live.”

“It’s nice, that they have such well-maintained old buildings,”  Kakashi shielded his eyes from the sun, counting the visible roofs in the complex, some ornately carved and shingled, some thatched.  “What do you think that is, five hundred years old?  That’s why they pay us all their rice, I guess.”

“‘Hidden villages:  We draw enemy fire, and eat all your rice.’  Maybe Tsunade-sama should send pamphlets with the tax collectors.”

Kakashi huffed a laugh.  “She’d make it sound threatening.  ‘Give up your rice, unless you don’t want to keep your _nice towns_ when war comes.  Unless your favourite kind of shrine is _on fire_.’  People reading it would hear her cracking her knuckles, somehow.”  

Iruka cocked his head, shrugging.

The building they faced as they came in had the grandest roof, with sculpted gods, curved tiles of oxidized copper, and a thick woven rope hanging in the doorway.  “Oh, that’s the shrine,” Iruka swiveled on one foot and pointed to their right. “More banners, there.” Nearly as grand as the shrine, and filled with everything from umbrellas to sandals, the shop was separated into the speckled tie-dye patterns on the left, the elaborate stenciled patterns on the right, and in the center, the intricately dyed yukata with nature scenes that Yuwa wore.  Through a door in the back, they could see looms thumping away.

“Welcome!” the shop attendant yelled, her voice deep and strident, and Iruka smiled back, wandering over to look for loud patterns.  Kakashi was still by the door, his back to the shop, but he turned to address the shop assistant. “Is it possible to get a tour of the rest of the complex?”

Iruka raised his eyebrows, but followed along when the shop assistant waved them over, ringing a bell.  “I don’t walk much, anymore,” she grinned at them, tucking her grey hair into place with hands stained deep blue to the elbow.  Moments later, a tall, comely person in disheveled layers of extravagantly dyed kimono stumbled in, elaborately pinned thigh-length hair jingling with bells as it came undone, and smelling strongly of sake.  The shop lady sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. She grabbed the newcomer by a shoulder, yanked out several porcelain hair pins to release the rest of the hair waterfall, and pulled a handkerchief from somewhere to lick and begin scrubbing at layers of smeared once-dramatic makeup.  Iruka turned away, covering a smile, as the new person, much younger, tried to bat away the attack. “You should have washed this off last night,” the shop lady clucked. “Now you need a shave.”

“You’re--Yuwa-san--Yuwa-san sent you?” It was difficult to speak, obviously, while dodging the fiercely-wielded handkerchief, and the skin being exposed was turning brilliant red.  “She--you came for--a romantic hot springs--”

“You must be Aoi-san,” Kakashi’s gaze flicked over all the untidiness, eyes crinkling with delight.  “Did you have a nice night?”

“Good heavens,” the shop lady rolled her eyes as Aoi-san wailed something unintelligible into blue-dyed hands.  

“Hopefully that’s a yes,” Iruka grabbed Kakashi’s elbow, hauling him over to look at yukata until Aoi joined them, face clean and pink, hair in a tidy bun, and form firmly tethered back into clothes.  

“You wanted to see the workshop?”  Aoi’s voice was a bit whispery.

“What’s that way?” Kakashi pointed out a side door to a little stone path, and Aoi blinked over.  

“Oh!  Through there?” Aoi-san’s extended blue hand looked like a demon’s in a painting of hell, and Iruka covered a snort.  The building at the end of the path was open, little more than a square of waist-high fencing with a thatched roof. “Those are our indigo vats.  Once it’s dried, it has to sit in lye and lime, and stay moist and warm--there are fires and vents underneath, in winter. There are seventy-two vats, and thirty shades of indigo,” Aoi-san explained, practised, as they walked the narrow path towards it.  What they could see of the clay floor was covered in what looked like the wooden lids to fermenting jars, except wide as a man’s arm was long, and ceramic lids to the vents in the floor.

Kakashi stepped inside, glancing back to meet Iruka’s eyes and jerk his head subtly at Aoi-san.  

Iruka paused in the doorway, eyes narrowing as he glanced at Aoi-san and back, and Kakashi raised his eyebrows, widening his eyes, and over-emphasized:  “This seems as good a place as any to have that private talk.” Aoi-san’s tall sandals stumbled to a stop on the boardwalk behind Iruka.

“Oh, that talk,” Iruka composed his face before turning to Aoi-san, who was glancing between them, eyes wide.  “Would you give us a moment?”

“Perhaps in the courtyard?” Aoi-san tried.

Kakashi’s frown tightened, and he knelt to touch something on the ground, rubbing his fingers together thoughtfully before crouching along the ground towards the plank-lid covered indigo vats dug into the floor.  

Iruka evaded Aoi’s outstretched arm, walking to the doorway and listening to Aoi’s sandals clopping in an uneven circle behind him.  “I can’t believe you’d buy that right in _front_ of me,” he said, intending his voice to carry.  The sandals stopped. “How am I supposed to feel, with you adding to our porn collection on our honeymoon?  How am I supposed to compete? Are you going to whack off to Jiraiya-sensei tonight? While I _pine_ , from the _corner_.”  Aoi-san gasped, and the sandals retreated a few steps.

Kakashi blinked at him, eyes crinkled with amusement.  “Calm _down_ , Iruka,” he paused for a moment, losing his composure at Iruka’s immediate and actual annoyance.  “You just bought a _packet_ of kunoichi prints, I saw them--and Jiraiya’s just--” his voice was strained with laughter, “--a pretty face, Iruka, I’m so tired of these _accusations--”_

Iruka squawked, clapping his hand over his mouth to cover the noise.   _“Jiraiya-sensei_ is just a _pretty face--”_

Kakashi turned to clasp a hand to his heart.  “That’s all,” he muffled a snort, “--and same with Gai, Iruka, I swear, that hot spring trip was _nothing_ to me--” he turned back to touch something on the floor, and Iruka stopped to wipe his eyes, take a deep breath, and put his hands on his hips.

“That’s what you say about _all the men,_ Kakashi--”

He knew Kakashi well enough to interpret his stare and the movement of his mask as him mouthing “ _All_ the men?” back.  Kakashi crouched as he followed whatever traces he’d seen between the vats, trying to ignore Iruka waxing melodramatic.

“‘Oh, Iruka, you are my leaping dolphin lover,’ you always tell me, ‘--oh Iruka, they mean nothing to me--they mean enough that you bought a picture of him _naked_ , curled in the tongue of his frog,’” Iruka felt his nose scrunching, and shook his head with a grimace.

“I imagine him so _moist_ and _slippery_ , I can’t help where my heart adores,” Kakashi waved his arms, edging around the wooden lids.  

Iruka swallowed down an audible gag, but his shoulders relaxed as Aoi-san’s sandals retreated to the door of the shop.  “I try and I try to be patient, knowing a legendary spirit beast _sat on your head_ as a child--”

Kakashi almost lost his balance laughing, leaning on his fist against the floor, before carefully lifting a lid aside.  “Gai makes me feel _loved,_ Iruka--”  

Iruka smacked his hand into his face.  “Is that what you really want, Kakashi?  To feel _thoroughly loved_ by Mighty Gai?!  Because I hear he has diagrams I can consult--”

 _“He_ doesn’t mind that I’m _disfigured_ , or when I nearly knock his teeth out because of my depth perception--”

“He really doesn’t, does he,” Iruka rolled his eyes, grinning.  

“Or startle awake and nearly murder him in my sleep--”

“Wait, he sleeps?  Like a normal person?  In a bed? And why were you sleeping with--”

 _“And--”_ Kakashi bit his lip, prodding at something in the vat with the blunt end of a kunai.  “--he gives _better piggyback rides_ than you do--”

Iruka’s mouth dropped open, aghast, before his eyes narrowed at the sound of new footsteps.  “Well how _could_ I measure up to that?  You’ve never told me my _piggyback rides_ were _sub-par_ \--you never tell me anything, you’re always in a _mask_ \--if I want to know anything about you I have to go _eavesdrop_ in the graveyard--”

Kakashi’s head jerked up, frowning, and Iruka quirked his mouth, blowing him a kiss.  “Ah. Well--you don’t appreciate me!” He waggled his eyebrows. “Someone of _your level_ could never understand how _foxy_ my mask is!” he beamed over, and Iruka groaned.  

“Well--” Iruka stopped short as Kakashi reached in and heaved the upper torso of a blue _person_ out of the indigo vat.  Her head hung limply as he lowered her to the floor, dye running from her mouth and ears and pooling under her hand.  Luckily, in the room of dye vats, the puddle spreading under her was invisible on a floor already saturated to a charcoal black.  Kakashi looked up and waved him onward.

“Not as foxy as--ramen,” Iruka tried, shrugging wildly, and leaning to get a better look at her glistening head wound.  “Noodle soup is hotter than you!”

Kakashi, who had been examining her hands, had to muffle his snort against his arm, shoulders shaking.  “I _knew_ you lusted for ramen,” his voice was unsteady.  “How could my foxy face ever measure up to something that’s actually boiling temperature?”

Iruka heard the sandals clopping towards them again, halting so close behind him he could smell the sake on Aoi’s breath.  His stomach twinged in memory of the night before. “And the dogs, Kakashi! My apartment always smells of dogs! Muddy pawprints, hair _on my toothbrush_ , smoking up the place--”

Kakashi blinked up from his gentle search of her layered obi and kimono.  “Smoke?” he asked innocently, glancing at the sandals behind Iruka turning a nervous circle.

“Oh,” Iruka remembered, abruptly, that non-ninja dogs usually did not smoke pipes.  “One of them sat on the stove.”

“You didn’t...put him out?!”  Kakashi bit his lips, taking a steadying breath through his nose, and continued his search with tears in his eyes.

“My jealous love makes me brutal,” Iruka’s voice quavered as he tried to get his grin under control.  He took a breath of relief, as the sandals clopped indecisively a few times, then strode back towards the shop again, before they were met by another set.  From the uneven gait, he guessed it was the shop lady now. “We should--”

“Well I thought you were _lonely_ when I wasn’t there, since every time I return from a missio--”

“A work trip--” Iruka corrected, waving for his attention, and pointing to the body and then the vat, with quick ushering motions.

Kakashi stared, then shrugged, shoving the corpse back in and pulling the vat lid back over, before calling  “Every time I return from a _work trip_ you have _yet another child_ from a _different parent--”_

Aoi squeaked, and Iruka stifled himself, eyes shining above his hands over his mouth, before turning to the rapidly-approaching sandals.  

Aoi-san touched his shoulder, glancing between their shiny eyes and shaking shoulders with wide eyes.  “Yu-Yuwa-san said to--to show you all the--warmest clothing--it’s--would you--” Aoi-san’s hands were shaking, and Iruka walked around to grab Kakashi’s sleeve, yanking him over.

“I apologize, Aoi-san!  We were just having a...difference of opinion."

Aoi-san swallowed hard, gaze flicking between them, then nodded.

"We’d love to see them.  I'm so sorry.” Iruka hooked elbows with Kakashi, letting Aoi-san get a bit ahead as they followed the clopping of sandals back to the main shop.

“What was that?” Kakashi bent to whisper.  “‘Put that corpse down this instant, Kakashi, you know it doesn’t belong to you’?”

“I _hope_ it doesn’t,” Iruka snorted, and Aoi-san flinched, glancing back at them.  “I think poor Aoi-san is going to cry.  Who on earth?  Do you think it was Koukyuu-san?  I’ll shop for a while, you can sneak back there when no one is listening, instead of having to keep this up--”

“Why shouldn’t we keep this up?  How else would I have found out you want to set my dogs on fire,” Kakashi whispered back, wiping his eyes.  “She didn't have anything on her--we should probably show her to _someone_ , though, it’s no good if we find ‘Koukyuu’s’ murderer and she’s been at the bathhouse this whole time, holding court.”

Iruka tried to keep his eyes front, clearing his throat.  “The guard? With Toro the cat--” he smacked his hand over his mouth and his urge to blurt out the sudden image he had of Toro the cat dragging off the corpse, leaving a wide blue stripe of dye like a paintbrush stroke.

“‘Put that thing back where it came from, you don’t know where it’s been,’” Kakashi whispered in his ear, and Iruka made a horrible wet choking noise, muffling his snickers into his elbow.  

“I can’t believe _Aoi-san_ beaned her on the head and stuck her in there, we were uninterrupted too long,” Iruka whispered back.

“Good.  I’d hate to have to tell Yuwa-san her Aoi-san is using corpses for _dying_ purposes,” Kakashi grunted as Iruka’s elbow connected hard with his ribs.  

“I’d hate to find anyone we _like_ in one of those.  Who do you think..?” he frowned back towards the vats.  “Have we met a single person in this town who _didn’t_ want to kill her?”  Their impetus shifted as soon as they were in the door to the shop, Kakashi dragging him over to try on everything Aoi-san held up.  Under the short curtain across the door, he could see the calves of their dragon-tattooed follower, and he squeezed Kakashi’s shoulder.  “...I’m going to try and get tickets to tonight’s play,” he ducked his head to catch Kakashi’s eye, flicking his gaze toward the man obtrusively waiting outside, and Kakashi’s mouth quirked.  

“I’ll surprise you later, then.”

Iruka leaned to kiss his cheek before trotting down the worn stone steps, and meandered off, slowly enough for his cunning shadow to refold the smaller-than-hand-sized fortune scroll he’d chosen to hide behind and catch up.  Iruka pretended to fix his sock, considering where they could best speak alone, and kept an ear on the slushy crunch of snow twenty feet behind him.

The vertigo as he dropped several feet into warm, earthy darkness was entirely a surprise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone is found after violence has killed them, and described. The violence is non-sexual and the death was quick.
> 
> Research for this chapter involved a lot of googling of drunk romantic texts...unfortunately I was unable to find any with ready-made ninja jokes?! Dang! Toro means tiger, which of course she is.
> 
> Leave me a comment and make my day!

**Author's Note:**

> Too much Japanese? Too many weird references? Do you require more cat? Concrit welcome! 
> 
> Hit me up on Tumblr, I'm Platypan!


End file.
